At its first general body meeting of the semester last night, the Undergraduate Council of Students elected eight at-large representatives, five executive board members and a representative to the Undergraduate Finance Board.
During the four-and-a-half-hour meeting, the 21 candidates running for the open at-large representative positions each pled their case to the voting UCS members before elections were held. The eight students elected to the at-large positions were Stefan Smith '09, Ellen DaSilva '10, Herald Staff Writer Meha Verghese '10, Steven Marks '09, Melea Atkins '10, Clay Wertheimer '10, Martin Bell '10 and Tan Van Nguyen '10.
After the at-large elections, elections were held for the five open positions on the executive board. Any voting member of the council - including the newly elected at-large representatives - was eligible to run for the vacant slots. Alex Wilpon '10 was elected secretary, Martin Bell '10 is the new Corporation liaison, Erik Duhaime '10 won the appointments chair race, Gabe Kussin '09 became communications chair and Michael Miller '10 was voted alumni liaison.
The final - and most controversial - election of the night was for council's representative to the UFB, which was won by Stefan Smith '09.
Smith joined the race after Bell implored a UCS member with "institutional memory" to enter the race, which had included only first-year students before that point. Some council members expressed misgivings about Smith's late decision to run and stuggested that he did not want the position but felt compelled to run. Adding to the confusion, some votes were found after the official count and announcement that Smith had won the election. After examining the votes and confirming that they did not affect the results, the council's executive board determined that Smith was legitimately voted UCS representative to UFB.
In other business, Student Activities Chair Drew Madden '10 presented the student groups applying for a change in recognition status. Three student groups - U.S. Campaign for Burma, the Brown Contemporary and Students for Barack Obama - were approved for Category I status. The Impulse Dance Company was granted Category II status, and the Triple Helix was approved for category III status.
Three students - Jake Heimark '10, Whit Schroder '09 and Ben Struhl '09 - ran failed bids for at-large positions on a platform of drastically reforming student government at Brown. Struhl and Schroder were associated with the controversial UCS presidential campaign of Eric Mukherjee '09 last spring. Mukherjee told The Herald days before the election that friends had drafted him into the race advocating the council's abolition, and he said he was initially unaware that he was running. Mukherjee was disqualified by the UCS elections board for failing to attend a mandatory information session and candidates' meeting.
