The Undergraduate Council of Students will hold internal elections this fall to fill vacant executive board and liaison positions. The internal elections — which will take place Sept. 18 at the council’s first general body meeting — will allow first-years to gain key student leadership roles if they join the Council before the election date.
Any undergraduate student can join UCS before that date, said former UCS Secretary Stacy Bartlett ’14.
Internally elected positions include roles on the Council’s executive board, such as secretary, communications chair and appointments chair, as well as liaison roles between the Council and other organizations, such as Corporation liaison, alumni liaison, UCS representative to the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and three UCS representatives to the Faculty Executive Committee, Bartlett said.
In the past, election to these positions has served as a springboard to higher leadership roles within UCS. Current UCS Vice President Sam Gilman ’15 served as communications chair his first year at Brown. Internally elected students, who often face little competition, can also be involved in prominent campus conversations by working with the Faculty Executive Committee and the Corporation.
External elections for other student government leadership positions such as UCS president, UCS vice president and Undergraduate Finance Board chair are held in the spring.
No contest
Candidates do not frequently face stiff competition in internal elections. In last year’s internal election, students ran unopposed for seven of nine available positions. Only the races for Corporation liaison and alumni relations liaison included more than one applicant, with three and two students running, respectively.
UCS President Todd Harris ’14.5 said he does not think poor publicity is responsible for the lack of competition, since the elections are usually advertised through a campus-wide email, social media and a UCS booth at the Student Activities Fair.
Rather, Harris said he thinks internal elections are often uncontested because the positions may target narrow pools of students with specific interests.
“Some of these positions appeal to … people who have developed specialties and interests in playing certain roles on the Council,” he said.
Admissions and Student Services Chair Sazzy Gourley ’16 said he thinks he earned his place as appointments chair — a position he held last year — though he ran unopposed.
“It’s easy to say that I won because I was the only person that ran,” Gourley said. “But I had the right qualifications and fit the position.”
How much influence?
Internally elected officers often help make influential decisions on campus.
For instance, as appointments chair, Gourley headed the UCS Appointments Committee, which is charged with interviewing and selecting undergraduate representatives for University committees, including the University Resources Committee — the body that recommends an annual budget to the president — and the Student Conduct Board, which evaluates cases of alleged student misconduct such as sexual assault.
But Gourley said he was principally responsible for scheduling interviews with applicants and did not have any more power over choosing applicants than did any other members of the executive board who served on the appointments committee.
“I felt my role was about logistically facilitating the appointments process, rather than making the decisions about who gets to be on the committees,” he said.
Bartlett, who served on the appointments committee, echoed Gourley’s sentiments. “He didn’t make the decisions, to be honest,” she said. “He really just organized things.”
First-year, no fear
Many first-years tend to run in internal elections, though they have been on campus for only a few weeks. In last year’s internal elections, first-years claimed seven of the 13 available positions, including appointments chair, webmaster, representative to the SAC and three representatives to the FEC.
Bartlett said some internally elected positions are well suited to first-years, while others require a student with more experience.
“It’s a difficult balance,” Bartlett said. “For some positions, having a first-year is positive because (he or she has) a fresh perspective, but for some positions we want someone who has had more experience with the system.”
Bartlett said first-years tend to make good UFB resentatives because “everyone, no matter how old they are, has to get the same training about the UFB process.” But older students tend to be better Corporation liaisons, she said, because they are more familiar with the way the Corporation works.
The current system can encourage impromptu candidacies. Alana Bhatla ’16 said she decided to run for webmaster as a first-year because no other candidates emerged. “When they got to that election and no one was running for it, I just stood up and made a speech and ran for it,” she said.
Gourley said he ran for appointments chair as a first-year because he wanted to learn more about how the University was run.
“As an incoming freshman, I was obviously new to a lot of what was going on at Brown,” Gourley said. “I was drawn to the position because it allows you to learn a lot about the committees that make decisions about what’s happening at Brown.”
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