Author: Sarah Dunlap
The ASOC elections ended Friday, April 13 after 884 students cast their votes and elected Ryan Bowen (junior) ASOC President for the 2007-2008 school year. Bowen, currently studying abroad in the Dominican Republic, campaigned by proxy with the help of Max Read (junior) and a gaggle of on-campus friends and supporters. The elections also decided Campus Wide Senators, Honor Board Jurors, General Assembly co-Chairs and class Senators.
In the next academic year, Bowen said he plans to “build bridges on campus” between the administration, students and ASOC. Spurred by what he perceived as a troubled campus climate, he said he ran for President to help bring disparate groups together.
“I am concerned with the state of campus climate, and to an even greater extent the identity of the college in general. To my knowledge and experience, the campus is encountering an identity crisis as an institution,” Bowen said. “Can we-as students coming from diverse, yet primarily homogeneous experiences-come together in love or even respect each other? It seems like in the last couple months that answer for us as students is ‘no.'”
In the race for Honor Board Juror, election administrators mistakenly removed Sammy Suboh (first-year) from the ballot when they attempted to remove Jackie Keeley (first-year), who dropped out of the election. Assistant Director of Student Life Kenna Cottrill called this “an unfortunate accident.” However, students who voted in this thirteen-hour time bracket had a day to change their vote.
“Students had approximately 24 hours to change their vote, and some did contact me. I think that since students received three emails from me regarding this situation, they had ample time to change their vote,” Cottrill said. Janelle Porter (junior) and Philip Arsenis (sophomore) won the Honor Board Juror race with 27.4 percent and 26.4 percent of the vote respectively.
Occidental students also decided Friday that Alison Dempsey (sophomore), Santiago Mendez (first-year), Roberto Calderon (sophomore) and Denise Loera (sophomore) will assume the roles of Campus Wide Senators.
After witnessing the campus climate meeting with Susan Prager, Calderon ran for office with a goal of general improvement. “I was inspired to run for office after the Town Hall and campus climate meetings [. . .] I really wanted to make a difference at Oxy and this would be the best way to do that,” Calderon said. “[I’m] just trying to see if there’s ways to bring the campus together through physical or policy changes.”
Mendez sought office to eradicate some of Occidental’s more bureaucratic aspects and to better communication within the student body. “I want to improve communication on campus, get rid of things like housing stamps and [needing] permission to write stuff on the quad, stuff like that,” Mendez said. “I also want to put whiteboards up in the halls, and I have yet to figure it out entirely, but I want to make Oxy less cliquey because each dorm seems to develop its own little group.”
The elections also determined the General Assembly co-Chairs, as well as the class Senators. Jessica Simes (junior) and Laura Knuttunen (junior) won the seats as General Assembly co-Chairs, and Ken Smutny (junior), Dominique Kirkwood (junior), Mike Myers (sophomore), Patrick McCredie (sophomore), Andrew DeBlock (first-year) and Nonda Hanneman (first-year) all won Senate positions for their class-levels.
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