Students woke up Friday morning to find their Facebook pages, hallways and stairwells plastered with the smiling faces of ASSU candidates. The 2010 campaign week opened Friday with two more endorsement announcements and the debut of two new Senate coalitions.
The Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) and the Queer Coalition joined the endorsement flurry, adding to the four groups that released their picks earlier last week. The editorial boards of The Stanford Daily, The Stanford Review and The Stanford Progressive published endorsements on Monday.
Any group or individual is free to endorse candidates for any position, and candidates traditionally display their endorsements on their campaign materials.
“In some cases, the endorsing groups are VSOs [voluntary student organizations], but in many cases they’re just groups of students getting together,” wrote ASSU Elections Commissioner Quinn Slack ’11 in an e-mail to The Daily. The Elections Commission does not regulate the endorsing process.
The Stanford Conservative Society will publish their endorsement Wednesday. The Stanford Democrats are also expected to endorse candidates.
Executive Race
The executive slate of Angelina Cardona ’11 and Kelsei Wharton ’12 has received the most endorsements, earning nods from SOCC, the Queer Coalition, the Green Alliance for Innovative Action (GAIA), the Women’s Coalition, California College Democrats and the editorial boards of The Stanford Daily and The Stanford Progressive.
The Queer Coalition also endorsed juniors Thom Scher and Stephanie Werner, while the No-Rain Campaign of Katherine Heflin ’11 and Daniel Leifer ’10 received the endorsement of Stanford Colleges Against Cancer.
The Stanford Review editorial board endorsed graduate students Ryan Peacock and Jonathan Bakke.
Undergraduate Senate
SOCC unveiled its list on Facebook early Friday morning, endorsing 12 Senate candidates: sophomores Michael Cruz, Ben Jensen and Rafael Vasquez and freshmen Milton Achelpohl, Pat Bruny, Katie Cromack, Madeline Hawes, Deepa Kannappan, Daniel Khalessi, Robin Perani, Kamil Saied and Juany Torres.
Cruz, who also received the SOCC endorsement last year, is the only incumbent in the race, while Jensen and Vasquez are running for Senate for the second time.
The Queer Coalition is composed of the Queer-Straight Alliance, Queer and Asian, Black and Queer at Stanford, Biversity and La Familia. The Emma Goldman Society for Queer Liberation and the Stanford Theatre Activist Mobilization Project endorsed 10 candidates.
Cromack, Cruz, Kannappan, Khalessi, Perani, Torres, Vasquez and freshmen Rebecca Sachs, Dan Thompson and Noemi Walzebuck are supported by the Queer Coalition.
Senate Coalitions
Recalling Students for a Better Stanford from last year’s campaign cycle, several Senate hopefuls have banded together to form the coalitions of Stanford United Now (SUN) and Students with Experience (S.Ex.). Coalitions, unlike the endorsements that come from student groups, are formed by the candidates themselves.
The 12 SUN candidates share the goal of “student government that enacts pragmatic change on the issues important to all students,” according to the group’s Web site.
SUN is composed of Sachs, Thompson, junior Nikola Milanovic and freshmen Jason Lupatkin, Stewart Macgregor-Dennis, Ed Negiar, Percia Safar, Rahul Sastry, Will Seaton, Bennett Siegel, Carolyn Simmons and Showly Wang. Milanovic is a columnist for The Daily and Seaton is a contributing writer.
SUN members were not immediately available for comment.
Emphasizing their experience on campus, juniors Philip Bui and Danny Crichton and sophomores Andrew Jang and Miles Unterreiner make up the S.Ex. coalition. Unterreiner is a Daily writer and Crichton is a columnist.
“One of the things we were really concerned about was the class diversity,” Crichton said. “Freshmen are great, freshmen are wonderful, but I don’t think fifteen freshmen on a Senate and a legislative body that represents the entire student body is really helping.”
Last year, 14 of the 15 Senate seats were won by students who were either endorsed by SOCC or were in the Students for a Better Stanford coalition. Zachary Johnson ‘10, who was an incumbent at the time, won the remaining seat.
Sophomore Class Presidents
So far, only the “So-phresh” sophomore class president slate of Joel Aguero, Imani Franklin, Elise Geithner and Thomas Hendee has received any endorsements. The Women’s Coalition and the Queer Coalition have announced support for “So-phresh,” whose members all currently serve on Frosh Council.
“Helmet of Shame” Campaign
Senator Palpatine announced a late bid for the Senate on Thursday in an e-mail to students. His write-in campaign last year earned 152 votes, 677 votes shy of last year’s cutoff for Senate seats.