PBHA Elects New Officers

The Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) elected Laura E. Clancy ’02 its president in a three hour cabinet meeting last night.

“It’s very clear that Laura is the most qualified,” said current president Trevor S. Cox ’01-’02, explaining why no one else had been nominated for the position.

Clancy is currently the Summer Program Group Officer.

PBHA is the umbrella organization for many of the College’s community service programs.

Later in the evening, Timothy R. Schneider ’03 was elected executive vice president after facing off against Aalap A. Mahadevia ’03.

The candidates for the contested positions gave short speeches followed by questions from the cabinet. The cabinet consists of PBHA’s officers and program directors and has the ultimate authority in all the association’s decisions. Seventy-three cabinet members attended yesterday’s meeting.

Other officers elected were Lauren D. Moore ’03, treasurer, John L. Smith ’04, secretary, Christi Tran ’04 and Alice O. Wong ’04, fundraisers, Sarah T. Tsang ’03 and Emily S. Wu ’03, programming chairs, and Hourng N. Kaing ’03, events coordinator.

The exact vote tallies are kept within the cabinet.

The cabinet also voted Visions, an AIDS outreach program providing needles to HIV infected patients and peer education at neary schools, into the PBHA umbrella as its 83rd member organization.

Clancy said allocation of resources and professionalism, especially in record-keeping and fundraising up to PBHA’s capabilities, would be her top priorities.

But the “single most important issue is the role of activism in PBHA,” Clancy said.

Moore said her main aim as treasurer was to continue the restructuring of the budget started in 1995.

“[We can] pool resources to achieve missions much more easily,” she said.

Many candidates for secretary stressed the importance of institutional memory.

“There’s a little bit of institutional memory in me,” joked Wu, who worked at PBHA for three years.

Candidates for programming chair highlighted the need for coordination between PBHA and non-PBHA programs, and said the group needs to ensure that program directors have a say in the association’s direction.

All the elected officials start Feb. 1, including those elected in a second round of elections to be held Dec. 5. These are for officials not written into the by-laws, such as officer-trustees and liaisons to program groups.

Cabinet members said they were pleased with the results of the meeting.

“I know they’ll do a great job,” said Suzanne M. Pomey ‘02.

Cox was also confident about leaving the organization with its new leaders. He will graduate this term, making a good transition “especially important,” Cox said.

“Having worked with most of the new officers, I’m very comfortable with their abilities,” he said.

Clancy did not give a full speech because she had just had her wisdom teath taken out.