Council Reps Largely Avoid Endorsements as Final Votes Are Cast

Students are turning out to vote in high numbers even as Undergraduate Council representatives withhold endorsements from a crowded Council presidency race entering its final day.

The relatively large number of representatives who have yet to commit to a ticket reflects a race unusually packed with candidates having UC experience, sources say. All four tickets have at least one UC representative, and of the 8 total candidates, five are current or former members of the Council’s executive board.

“The choice is not easy,” Sietse K. Goffard ’15, the Council’s current vice president said, adding that he has remained neutral throughout the race. “A lot of people probably consider the fact that all of them have experience, all of them have differentiated platform ideas.”

This year’s field is a contrast with last year’s election, in which the winning ticket ran on a platform of thicker toilet paper and more tomato basil ravioli soup.

“Last year the sentiment was ‘should I vote for a serious ticket or should I vote for a joke ticket’,” Goffard said.

By Zorigoo Tugsbayar

Undergraduates, meanwhile, are casting ballots at a rate 0n pace to meet or even exceed last year’s turnout of nearly half the student body.

By 5 p.m. Wednesday, about 2,650 students had voted in the election that also features three referendum questions, according to UC Election Commission chair Matthew C. Estes ’18. Last year, 3,181 total votes were cast.

Voting closes at noon on Thursday.

Last year, 93 percent of UC representatives lined up behind the ticket of  C.C. Gong '15 and Goffard. Despite the support, a rival ticket running as a joke defeated Gong and Goffard in a tight race.

Many representatives this year have refrained from publicly endorsing or joining a campaign staff of the one of the tickets.

“A lot of the people on the UC this year didn't want to endorse someone,” Meghamsh Kanuparthy ’16, a UC presidential candidate said. He added that mostly freshman representatives endorsed tickets.

Ava Nasrollahzadeh ’16  and Dhruv P. Goyal ’16 agreed that Council members appear more split and undecided, but said Monday that 17 representatives have endorsed their campaign.

Goyal said that more representatives have signed on to his ticket than to others “by a huge margin.” Of the 17, six are freshman, meaning at least half of the Council’s freshman representatives will vote for his ticket, Goyal said.

Happy Yang ’16 and Faith A. Jackson ’16 have four Council representatives, including the body’s current parliamentarian, listed as official campaign staffers, according to logs Estes shared with The Crimson. Kanuparthy’s ticket and the ticket of Luke R. Heine ’17 and Stephen A. Turban ’17 do not list any current Council members as staffers.

Jackson said she personally believed their campaign was likely acquiring club endorsements more successfully than attracting a vast majority of Council representatives.

“We’re actually doing much better with regular clubs than we may be doing with the UC,” she said.

—Staff writer Noah J. Delwiche can be reached at noah.delwiche@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ndelwiche.