Undergraduate Council Fills Twelve Committee Spots

Twele undergraduates were elected on Tuesday to four Undergraduate Council student-Faculty committees.

In the elections, conducted by the council’s Student Affairs Committee (SAC), candidates were given a minute and a half each to address the SAC board and then answered five questions posed by board members.

Melissa A. Eccleston ’04, Shira S. Simon ’04 and Adam M. Johnson ’01-’02 were elected to the Committee on House Life (CHL), while Jennifer S. Axsom ’04, Aalap A. Mahadevia ’02, and Zachary L. Bercu ’04 will serve as new representatives to the Committee on College Life (CCL). Omolola Kassim ’04, James M. Carter ’02, and Briana M. Ewert ’03 were elected to the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) and Stephanie L. Murg ’02, and Andre M. Moura ’03 are new members of the Standing Committee on the Core.

SAC chair Rohit Chopra ’04 said he was pleased with the candidate turnout for the elections. In the CUE race, 10 candidates vied for three positions.

“A majority of people on these committees are not on UC, which is great,” he said. “It is also the most diverse group in terms of age and experience. There are also lots of women which there was not last year.”

Chopra and vice-SAC chair Brian R. Smith ’02 sit on each of the four standing committees except for the Standing Committee on the Core.

Chopra said the four committees are important because they “represent the bulk of where UC advocacy will go through.”

Each committee meets monthly and is composed of Faculty and student representatives. The Standing Committee on the Core is a governing board which votes on new courses to count towards Core credit. Chopra said he hopes the board can add far more departmental alternatives so students can fulfill their Core requirements in classes they are interested in taking.

The CHL is aimed at improving House life. Simon, who was also on the committee last year, said she is especially proud of the CHL’s success in obtaining the recent 2 a.m. curfew extension for non-alcoholic parties in dining halls. She said she hopes the committee will be able to apply the curfew extension to individual room parties by the spring, and continue pushing for universal keycard access and better House-based advising.

“There is a lot of potential because students want a better community and the House Masters also want that,” Simon said.

The CCL is involved in student activities and has the ability to approve student organizations for official recognition and suggest policy changes.

Chopra emphasized the need to “look for some sort of centralized space where people can share space…so that [student groups] have a place to meet.”

The CUE advises various departments and the dean for undergraduate education. Kassim, who is new to the CUE board, said that she was not interested in running for the council, but wanted to be involved in campus life.

One main issue on the CUE’s agenda is concentration advising, which Kassim said is “not a losing battle.”

Elections for a half-dozen other council committees, including the Committee on Advising and Counseling, the Committee on Campus Safety, and the Committee for Shareholder Responsibility, will be held in upcoming weeks.