35 Students Declare UC Candidacy in Midterm Election

Thirty-five students declared their candidacy for the 11 open seats on the Undergraduate Council in this year’s midterm election, which will take place from Feb. 9 to Feb. 12.

The number of declared candidates this election is more than twice the number who ran during last year's UC’s midterm election, when the Council had to extend the deadline for declaring candidacies after only two students submitted a declaration to run by the original deadline.

Cabot, Dudley, Eliot, Leverett, Mather, Pforzheimer, and Oak Yard each has one open seat on the Council, while Dunster and Kirkland have two, according to Election Commission chair Matthew C. Estes ’18. Open seats result from the term expirations of Executive Board members or from students who choose to leave the Council after just one semester of their year-long terms.

This election also features increasingly competitive races compared to those in recent years. Although Dudley and Dunster will have noncompetitive elections, there are eight competitive elections this cycle, an increase over the two competitive elections in last year’s midterms and six the year before.

The most competitive election will be in Oak Yard, where 13 students will run for the lone open freshman seat on the Council, made available by the departure of freshman representative Camilla Suarez ’19. Freshmen UC seats have historically been the most competitive, and three of this election’s Oak Yard candidates were previously candidates for their yard during the fall term elections, when 15 candidates ran for Oak Yard seats.

Sophomores make up the largest group of students running for office, with 15 sophomores running across seven different Houses.

Two members of last year’s Executive Committee, Oliver W. Kim ’16 of Leverett House and Meghamsh Kanuparthy ’16 of Kirkland House, will be running for re-election after the expiration of their terms. Executive Committee members serve calendar-year terms.

The following students have declared their intentions to run for the UC:

Cabot House

Caleb F. Aldrich ’18

Moe K. Ball ’17

Christopher B. Cruz ’18

Sam Leichenger ’18

Adam Pollack ’18

Mujtaba A. A. Warsi ’17

Dudley House

Laila M. Smith ’17

Dunster House

Mika S. Esquivel ’18

Yesenia L. Jimenez ’17

Eliot House

Stephen H. Cho ’18

Curtis G. McLeod ’18

Kirkland House

Laura S. Chang ’18

Waverley Y. He ’18

Meghamsh Kanuparthy ’16

Sara S. Surani ’18

Parth C. Thakker ’18

Leverett House

Oliver W. Kim ’16

Hugo Yen ’18

Mather House

Iman A. Masmoudi ’18

Yehong Zhu ’18

Oak Yard

Nicholas D. Boucher ’19

Murat Eczacibasi ’19

Joshua J. Florence ’19

Amie Garcia ’19

Dahlia S. Huh ’19

Deepika S. Kurup ’19

Jorge Ledesma ’19

Shira Li ’19

Dionisie Nipomici ’19

Ana Olano ’19

Narayan Sundararajan ’19

Alyn Wallace ’19

David L. Xu ’19

Pforzheimer House

Will G. Harrington ’16

Neel Mehta ’18