College Council (CC) held its elections this past week, voting in a new slate of presidents, vice presidents and representatives. 478 students voted in this year’s election, which featured only one presidential ticket, bringing turnout to 21.73 percent. To compare, the turnouts of the 2018 and 2017 College Council presidential elections were 50.02 percent and 46.79 percent, respectively. This election’s turnout by class year was 14 percent for seniors, 17 percent for juniors, 20.17 percent among sophomores and 31.75 percent among freshman. Last semester, the turnouts were 16.24, 16.37, 19.75 and 45.91, respectively.
On Sunday, CC announced vice presidential results. Chris Mykrantz ’20 and Solly Kasab ’21 will serve as vice presidents of communications, Haoyu Sheng ’20 and Ruairi OCearuil ’20 will serve as vice presidents for academic affairs, Will Howie ’20 will serve as vice president for student organizations, Tristan Whalen ’22 will serve as vice president for student affairs and Kai Soto-Dessen ’22 will serve as vice president for community and diversity.
Additionally, Jamie Vaccaro ’21, treasurer of the sailing team, was selected as CC’s new treasurer. Vaccaro’s election comes at a time when CC is grappling with spending on high cost club sports, including sailing. In 2016-2017, the latest year for which statistics were available, sailing requested $17,873.91.
Lance Ledet ’21 was selected as parliamentarian and Long Le ’21 was selected as assistant treasurer.
There were no self-nominations for the position of the class of 2021 representative, with write-ins electing Tyler Johnson, Alex Szrol, Onyeka Obi and Porter Johnson to the position of class of 2021 Representative. Notably, “Papa Smurf” amassed nine votes in the first round, more votes than Szrol, Obi or Johnson. In an email to the Record, Szrol remarked on his narrow victory over the popular children’s cartoon character. “The fact that I nearly lost to ‘Papa Smurf’ really speaks to the general attitude students have towards what College Council does,” Szrol said. “Nonetheless, I’ll try my best to represent both the students that care and don’t care about Council.”
Obi does not believe that the lack of self-nominations demonstrates a lack of belief in the college by members of the class of 2021. “We are invested in fixing the parts of the College that are unsustainable in ways that are actually tangible,” she said. Obi plans to give her role to Brendan Hall.
For Tyler Johnson, who cited the low turnout in all class representative elections, “The lack of self noms for 2021 rep seems to be an exaggeration of the broader trend.”
Linda Worden, Serapia Kim, William Chen and Jake Bingaman were elected to represent the class of 2019.
Shane Beard, Alex Zilkha, Jesus Payan and Kevin Silverman were elected to represent the class of 2020. Silverman resigned his seat following the election.
Alice Qu, Lilianne Au, Margot Berman and Max Chayet will be representing the class of 2022.
During this election, three co-presidents were elected to CC. For the next calendar year, Ellie Sherman ’20, Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí ’20 and Olivia Tse ’20 will serve as CC co-presidents. As co-president, Sherman said that she seeks to engage in “compassionate leadership.”
Cabrera-Lomeli affirmed this commitment, stating “Our resources, networks and institutional knowledge are not here for the exclusive benefit of CC, but for the whole campus. CC is yours.”
