Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senators C.J. Mourning, Duncan Pickard and Elton Sykes have announced that they will run for the
TCU presidency this month.
During interviews with the Daily, each emphasized the need to bring unity to the Tufts community and identified improving campus safety as a top priority, although each campaign will have a different overarching message.
The candidates expect to be officially nominated this Sunday at the next Senate meeting. They were all reelected to the Senate for next year at last Thursday's TCU Candidates' Meeting.
The candidates will meet in two debates later this month, and the presidential election will occur on Wednesday, April 23.
Sykes, the only junior of the three, co-chairs the Administration and Policy Committee. Pickard, a sophomore, is on the Senate Executive Board, serving as the TCU parliamentarian; he also chaired the Allocations Board's (ALBO) Council I, which issues funding to student culture groups. Mourning, a sophomore, chairs the Services Committee and also serves on ALBO.
Mourning painted herself as the most accessible and unifying candidate, saying that the president's primary responsibility is to make sure students' voices are heard.
"I'm running because I think Senate has an obligation to the student body to make sure that students are having the best experience that they can possibly have at Tufts," she said. She put a priority on making "sure that the Senate is ... actually representing what students want."
Mourning said her roles on ALBO and the Services Committee put her in touch with the student body's desires. "I really feel that through both those roles I was able to get a very good perspective on what students want," she said.
The other candidates pinned their messages more on specific policy goals.
Pickard emphasized the need to unite the Tufts population, which he sees as "diverse and multidimensional" but not yet unified enough. "I don't think that just a bunch of diverse people in one place makes us diverse," he said.
Sykes listed three major items of campus life as "the three main points of my campaign" - as president, he would like to improve security, social life and residential life.
Sykes also described himself as a natural unifier who would facilitate progress. "I think that also being president, you have to be good enough to bring the administration and the students together, and I think I have the ability to bring people together that don't agree but make compromises," he said.
Securing the campus
Coming on the heels of a crime-ridden month, the upcoming presidential campaign is set to feature a prominent discussion of how to improve campus safety.
Pickard called the issue his first priority. "Improving public safety is going to be the first thing that I'm going to do" as president, he said. "That's the most pressing issue on campus. It's something that we can't let the administration get away with because [the university's handling of public safety issues has] been unacceptable."
In addition to better lighting on and off campus and more emergency phones on campus, Pickard offered a stinging critique of the Tufts University Police Department's (TUPD) safety escort service. "We need to have either a student-led or better TUPD-led escort service on this campus," he said. TUPD officers providing late-night escorts to students are "not allowed to take students between off-campus houses, which is ridiculous," Pickard said. He also lamented the fact that on a day when TUPD officers are particularly busy with a major event, there could be no one to provide students with safety escorts.
Mourning also mentioned the need to improve the escort system and called campus safety in general "one of the biggest issues."
She mentioned the need for "a better safe-ride system - whether it be more student-run or run by a different branch of TUPD," she said, "so police officers aren't scolding students" for being intoxicated. She also said she would work to increase the number of blue-light phones on campus and the police presence. "The fact that students don't feel safe on campus ... That's a problem we need to address," she said. "It's ridiculous."
Sykes, who listed improving safety as one of his three main goals, did not speak to the issue of enhancing the escort service, but did lay out specific plans to expand the blue-light phone system and to place more security cameras on campus.
"I want to definitely put more blue lights on Powderhouse Boulevard and near the circle," he said. "There's been a lot of instances of violence and robberies there; I think [the number of blue lights] needs to be increased. I also think there needs to be more closed-circuit cameras in the Lower Campus Garage."
Improving social life
Sykes and Pickard said they perceive a serious need to improve cohesion and community among students. Sykes wanted to foster a more tightly knit undergraduate community on the Medford/Somerville campus. He also catalogued a vision of bringing together students from Tufts' three campuses.
"It seems like we have a community of our own little friends, but it seems like we don't have a Tufts community," he said. "It seems like we only have that Tufts community at Spring Fling and NQR. My plan would be to have a bonfire the night before Homecoming. Another part to improving the social life is improving residential life." He said that making dormitory common rooms more appealing would bring undergraduates together more often, be it for studying or simply relaxing.
He also said that he would like to create an event that would unite the Medford/Somerville, Grafton and Boston campuses. The event would occur "probably in Grafton where all three campuses can get together and discuss something, probably research - just something social where all three campuses can get together. [It would] also [be] a social event, like a carnival," he said.
Pickard said that campus unity was the underlying theme in the philosophy of his campaign. "All of the policy ideas that I have are united under one vision ... The vision is building the campus community and trying to get people back and trying to unite us around being Tufts students," he said. "That's the theme for all my policy ideas."
Pickard looked to expand programming that would bring Tufts students together in a university-sponsored environment. He would like to see programming for every night of the weekend - Thursday, Friday and Saturday - each week.
"Social life definitely needs to be improved," he said. "I'm realistic about what needs to be done. We're not going to build a new building. We're not going to have all these new spaces that are devoted to social life. We need to improve the spaces that we have now" and expand programming, he added.
Mourning said she would be willing to work to improve social life, but she doesn't expect the problem to go away soon. "I think in general, students are always going to complain about social life on campus, and if people are still complaining about it, it's something that needs to be fixed," she said, adding that she thought having the university sponsor more late-night gatherings would help satisfy students.
Interacting with the administration
Each candidate argued forcefully for the need to streamline students' access to the administration and their ability to communicate with the Senate.
Mourning said that in her past Senate experience, she has worked to bring many different student concerns to the administration's attention. "As Services Committee chair, I was able to work very closely with administrators [in] representing different student needs," she said.
Mourning is not satisfied that everyday undergraduates feel in touch with the Senate. She cited a "lack of communication between the ... TCU Senate and the students ... We do two surveys a year, but besides that, we're not actually doing anything to interact with the students," she said.
The inner workings of the Senate body are shrouded in mystery, Mourning said. "Making sure students aren't confused by the different processes" is a main goal for her, she said. Nowadays, most students do not know "how to get what they want to see done, done," she added.
Pickard, like Mourning, would seek to help students communicate with the administration. "There are a lot of little issues that bother students, whether it's parking for sophomores or wireless Internet or just the quality of residential facilities," he said. "Students need to know that the Senate is there to support them and that the Senate is going to advocate for those issues ... Making the Senate more transparent" is a priority, he said.
Pickard also wanted to foster open dialogue for students who feel left out of the community. "Trying to create better support networks for students who feel like they're underrepresented on this campus" is a major goal, he said. "We definitely need better support networks and [to] have a place where minority communities feel safe to talk about issues that are bothering them."
Sykes emphasized his will to stand up to the administration for issues that students care about.
"Being able to bring people together - I think that's a very good quality that I have and the president definitely needs. I also think that people will know where I stand on issues, and I won't be afraid to stand up for the interests of the students," he said. "A lot of times, people on the Senate forget that we represent the student body, and we shouldn't always be beholden to the administration ...
"That discussion came up when ... we wrote the resolution about changing the [judicial review] process," he said. "That whole discussion came about about how we shouldn't offend people ... It was one line that people wanted to change because people thought that it might have offended Veronica Carter, and in my opinion, it didn't offend her. And in my opinion, we should remember that we are elected by the student body and we are representing the student body ... and we shouldn't always try to be nice about it."
Marysa Lin and Nina Ford contributed reporting to this article.
