Close '04 races lead to runoffs

Though the USG announced the results of the freshman class elections yesterday afternoon, the two highest seats have yet to be filled.

A two-day runoff election starting early tomorrow morning will determine the president and vice president. Nicole Apollon and Eli Goldsmith will face off for the presidency while Rishi Jaitly and Emily Minkow will vie for the vice president's seat.

Meanwhile, the other three officers can rest easily after securing their positions. The treasurer will be Michael Angelo, the social chair Milo Adams and the secretary Maureen Monagle, who ran unopposed.

"I felt relieved to know I was running unopposed, but I feel I was qualified," Monagle said. "I'm looking forward to [being] part of a team that unites the freshman class."

The races for president and vice president must have a runoff because no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote, and more than three candidates originally vied for each position, said Joe Kochan '02, USG chief of staff and elections co-chair.

Apollon and Goldsmith share the same goal of uniting the entire freshman class, but have different strategies to achieve that end.

"The residential college system is great in the first month of school to get to know people," Goldsmith said. "But it is important to bring the whole freshman class together. I want to do more study breaks, trips to New York City, Yankees' tickets and theater tickets."

Notable planks on Apollon's platform include posting campus maps on blue light phones, opening a free doughnut table in the residential colleges for late risers on Friday mornings and organizing a freshman job fair.

"Most of the job fairs are for juniors and seniors," she said, "but freshmen need jobs and internships too."

Though both Jaitly and Minkow said they also want to work to bring their classmates together, they expect a more scaled-back role for class officers.

"A lot of the people running said we'd go to Philly or New York," Jaitly said. "The truth is no matter who wins, we're still going to do what the freshman class always does — the freshman formal, dances and freshman trips."

Minkow noted the class officers' job is not about making policy decisions, as USG members do. "Freshman government is more about uniting the class," she said.

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Kochan said roughly 60 percent of the freshman class voted in the election. Electronic voting for the runoff elections will begin Thursday morning at 12:01 a.m. and end Friday night at 11:59 p.m. The USG will conduct paper balloting Friday at the residential college dining halls and at the Frist Campus Center.