Class of 2012 to vote for TCU senators today

    While the majority of next year's Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate body was automatically elected on Thursday in uncontested elections, 13 freshmen will vie for seven Senate seats today in a general election.
    All members of the Class of 2012 who have paid the Student Activities Fee are eligible to vote in today's online vote, which was scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. and to continue until 11:59 p.m.
    This election season saw many uncontested seats result in automatic elections, including the six of the seven seats on the TCU Judiciary, two of five positions on the Committee on Student Life (CSL), four Senate seats for the rising senior class and 10 Senate seats for the rising junior class.
    After a candidates meeting on Thursday, the Elections Commission (ECOM) verified the eligibility of all candidates running for uncontested positions.
    Current juniors Callie Kolbe, Xavier Malina, Brandon Rattiner and Antonella Scarano will represent next year's senior class in the Senate. Scarano is the outgoing TCU historian; Rattiner, an outgoing co-chair of the Senate's Education Committee, intends to run for the TCU presidency this year.
    Each class is allotted seven Senate seats. When fewer than seven candidates run, the remaining seats drop down to the next class.
    The three unsought senior senator positions therefore moved to the junior class, making 10 junior senator seats available. Ten candidates thus ran for just as many spots, resulting in all the candidates' automatic elections.
    Current sophomores Nedghie Adrien, Edward Chao, Eoghan Conway, Jack Dilday, Chas Morrison, Dan Pasternack, Bruce Ratain, Tomas Valdes, Sam Wallis and Samia Zahran will represent next year's junior class. Both Morrison and Zahran are planning to run against Rattiner for TCU president; Morrison is the outgoing chair of the Senate's Administration and Policy Committee.
    The six new members of the Judiciary are Guktae An, Elizabeth Doyle, Lindsay Helfman, J.P. Kaytrosh, Shayan Purkayastha and Colin Smith. Junior Brandon Sultan and freshman Andrew Thorne will serve on the CSL next year.
    The one remaining Judiciary seat and the three remaining CSL seats will become available in the general election at the start of the fall semester.
    Meanwhile, an open forum for candidates for the Class of 2012's Senate seats took place on Monday.
    Freshmen Aaron Bartel, Danielle Cotter, Jonathan Danzig, Kate de Klerk, Luke Fraser, Tomas Garcia, Joel Greenberg, Manuel Guzman, Nunu Luo, Elliot McCarthy, Sigourney Norman, Shantal Richards and Abraham Stein, are on today's ballot.
    ECOM Chair Adam Weldai said the competitive freshman election resulted from a highly motivated and vocal freshman class.
    "This freshman class that we have now is incredibly active," said Weldai, a senior. "They are more vocal than any other class I've seen at Tufts. These people pay attention to their issues, and they really want to get involved."
    Wallis, a senator who was automatically reelected last week, shared this sentiment.
    "The freshmen do have a tremendous amount of passion about things," Wallis said. "I think some senior members of the body next year will be able to direct that energy."
    Kaytrosh, who will serve on the Judiciary next year, said that he believes his class' leaders have a lot of potential but also need specific goals.
    "As a group, we haven't quite figured out what specific measures we're going to channel this energy into," Kaytrosh said. "There's a lot to be expected from this class in the future … Only now are we just starting to get our voice."
    According Weldai, several current juniors, including outgoing TCU President Duncan Pickard, have foregone reelection in order to pursue other goals, such as seeking out trustee representative positions on the Senate. Last year's TCU president, senior Neil DiBiase, took this route.
    "They have served the TCU as best they can as senators and would like to run for trustee representative in the fall," Weldai said.
    The majority of this year's Senate executive board was comprised of juniors.
    Weldai said that this year's election distinguishes itself somewhat from those in years past.
    "We have an underclassman-heavy Senate coming," he said. "It's also different because in most elections in the past, some seats drop down to the rising freshmen."
    Some senators who are not seeking reelection cited frustrations with the structure of the student government's legislative body.
    "I'm not running because I think that a lot of the things I'm passionate about can be accomplished without being in the Senate," said Shabazz Stuart, a sophomore who served as a senator this year.
    Stuart said that while the body's lengthy Sunday evening meetings are not necessarily inefficient, a lot of extended bureaucratic measures can be avoided in committee meetings, where he believes progress is best made.
    Freshman Jimmy Zuniga, who also served as a senator this year and is not running for reelection, said he disagreed with how the Senate functions.
    "Things I've accomplished this year, I have done outside the capacity of the Senate," he said. "I don't need a title to continue bringing change to this campus."