Elections for open TCU Senate seats begin today

Hopeful candidates for open TCU Senate seats will turn in their candidacy petitions today in order to become verified as official candidates and begin campaigning for next Wednesday's election.

The available positions include seven seats for first-year Senate representatives, five seats on the Freshman Class Council and five out of the six community representative seats, according to Paige Newman, chair of the Elections Commission (ECOM).

The community representative seats include representatives for the Africana, Latino, Asian American, LGBTQ, and the women's communities, Newman, a senior, said. The only filled community representative seat is the one for the international community, which was filled last spring.

Campaigning will begin after today and continue until the Sept. 30 election date, according to Newman. Candidates will also have a chance next Tuesday evening to introduce themselves to the Tufts community and talk about why they're running for their positions at the candidate's forum.

"ECOM will ask [the candidates] a series of questions about who they are, why they want to run for that position, what makes them qualified, what they want to see done," Newman said.

The forum will be open to anybody who is interested in hearing from the candidates, she added.

TCU President Brian Tesser said this year's election date is unusually late, with a long period between the start of the school year and the actual elections. The date is set by the Office of Campus Life each year, according to Newman.

"Part of [why the election date is so late] is because of school starting so late and then all these religious holidays," Newman said.

In addition to a late election start, Newman explained that the Senate has had difficulty filling the community representative seats that represent the Group of Six.

"We always really struggle to fill those for some reason," she said.

This year, however, Newman said many people have connected with ECOM about the community senate seats.

"We’ve had a bunch of people reach out and express interest, so we’re excited and think that pretty much all of those are going to be filled," she said.

Tesser said the Senate is working closely with ECOM to publicize the election to the general public and to spread information about the running process for candidates. 

"We’re hoping that [this] in turn will help to lead to more voter turnout, and having competitive elections really matters," Tesser said.

Newman added that despite low election turnout in previous elections, she is hopeful for the upcoming election.

"Freshmen are always really excited to run and so fall elections are always our highest turnout for both voters and number of people running," she said. "We feel really good about that, but we are pushing our advertising campaign just as hard if not harder than [we did] in the past."

Some of the voter turnout efforts ECOM are engaging with potential voters by pushing information about the election on social media, tabling and putting up posters around campus.

"A lot of the advertising always relies on the candidates," Newman said. "But because so many freshmen always run for these seats, people always know about these elections a lot more because they’ve put their posters all over campus, they’re a lot more vocal about it, so they are really our big push in the fall in terms of getting people to know about it."

TCU Senate filled three trustee representative Senate positions during their last meeting on Sunday after an application and interview process, according to Tesser. He added that this year's  TCU Senate will have more new members than returning members, which is uncommon. The ratio of new to returning senators will be somewhere around 15 returning members to 22 new members, he said.

"I’m excited to kind of have some fresh voices and fresh faces because sometimes we get stuck in this pattern of having the same people coming in year in, year out and kind of having the same opinions," Tesser said.

Tesser added that many members of TCU Senate share his enthusiasm for the upcoming year.

"Having a very new body is something I’m very excited about...even the new senators who are already jumping right in and have project ideas and are excited about doing it," Tesser said.