On Friday, the Student Life Committee emailed the student body announcing that three Student Council positions would require special elections due to a lack of eligible candidates. These jobs are chair for housing and dining, chair for campus safety and wellness and vice president for business and finance. In the standard elections, apart from senior class president, every other role, including Student Council president and vice president for student life, is uncontested.
The last instance of a special election for the Business and Finance Committee (BFC) chair position occurred during the 2021-22 academic year, following the resignation of Rocco Danese ’23 due to his spring semester abroad. Because of this situation, a rule was instated during the 2023-24 academic year requiring candidates to be on campus for the entire year in order to be eligible to run.
As the main sponsor of student organizations, the BFC serves a crucial role for the Kenyon community. One reason for the lack of candidates is that, according to Student Council bylaws, in order to be eligible to chair a committee, one must have been a member of it. As the entirety of this year’s BFC is composed of members of the graduating Class of 2026, there is no one who would be able to run for the role. In theory, this requirement is beneficial: It ensures that a candidate running to chair a committee has experience. In practice, however, this rule has created circumstances in which seats are reserved for a very limited group of people, as it is difficult to have multiple candidates running when rules for eligibility are tight.
In a message to the Collegian, junior class representative to the Senate and special election BFC candidate Ciaran Strimaitis ’27 discussed his thoughts on the eligibility requirements. “I was part of several debates about election policy, and if I remember correctly, I do believe there was discussion of the eligibility requirements, but it was decided to keep them,” he shared. “Overall, I think that’s great and it in theory creates strong and experienced leadership in the chair/VP positions, but where it becomes a problem is when students don’t participate in those committees; therefore there aren’t enough eligible people running in the normal election, and we end up in the present situation.”
Abby Warshauer ’27 is the sole candidate for Student Council president. In an interview with the Collegian, she discussed her platform and key issues, one of which is greater transparency between the administration and student body. “I think that there’s a disconnect between [the students and administration] and that’s because we don’t get the behind-the-scenes information. So my role as president would be, of course, being a liaison between these groups and working specifically with administration on creating a framework that would streamline giving more information about decisions, and then giving a clear path for how students can be involved in decision making before things are announced.”
She also discussed the implications of having multiple empty elections and her ideas to prevent this from occurring in the future. “I would love for Student Council to have a physical space, even if it’s just, like, a podium somewhere in the library where it says Student Council, and there’s information about what we’re doing,” she said, adding, “I think Student Council does a lot of things. Students see not so much of that, because a lot of it is managing things behind the scenes. But [the amount of empty elections] is disappointing. I was expecting there to be more [people running].”
In a message to the Collegian, sophomore class representative to the Senate and candidate for Campus Senate co-chair Eleanor Retish ’28 shared her thoughts. “I feel disappointed but not surprised by the lack of interest in Student Council and Senate elections. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that students don’t understand what Student Council and especially [the] Senate do,” she explained. “Not only that, but student government doesn’t actually have a direct line to create actual change for the most part. I believe that if students were more engaged, this could change, but without this engagement and advocacy, it is very difficult for the students who are involved to make substantial and lasting change,” she added.
As for the question of keeping Student Council’s eligibility requirements, Warshauer discussed the merits and consequences of the rule. Because Warshauer became the chair of the Buildings, Grounds and Sustainability Committee by a special election, she has a unique perspective. “I think there’s something to be said that when people are running and they’ve been on the committee, they have kind of that institutional knowledge that’s really valuable for leading the committee. But of course, I can trust the students to make that decision,” she said. “People can decide what they think would be the best option, so I think [removing that eligibility rule] is definitely something worth a conversation.”