Three left in senior class trustee race

The three finalists for this year's young alumni trustee position are seniors Eli Goldsmith, Rishi Jaitly and Corey Sanders. They now move on to final round of the electoral process, from which one will be selected to serve on the board of trustees for four years.

The position — awarded to one graduating senior each year — guarantees membership on the board of trustees. All trustees have equal status.

During the first round of balloting which ended March 4, seniors voted online from a list of 37 candidates. Voters could select as many names as they wished, provided they ranked them in order of preference.

In this round, a majority of the candidates voted to prohibit campaigning and candidate statements. All that was provided was a website displaying each candidate's yearbook photo.

In the upcoming final round of the election, members of the classes of 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 are eligible to vote.

For this round, the three finalists were asked to submit a biography, a list of things they'd accomplished at Princeton and a candidate statement answering three open-ended questions. The information for each candidate will then be compiled and edited by a professional writer, and the polished summaries will be presented to voters to help them make their decision.

All three candidates said they support the procedure, which is similar to that used in other trustee elections.

"There's no difference in the position that one of the three of us will be doing compared to the other trustees that are elected, so I think it's a good idea to follow the set of rules that all trustee elections follow," Sanders said.

They also agreed the presence of a professional writer would make the election more fair. "It's a degree of uniformity in that they're all written in the same way so that there's no kind of favoritism in how it's prepared," Goldsmith said. "It means voters will focus on the substance of someone's biography rather than the presentation."

As in the first round, candidates will not be allowed to campaign. Each finalist also supported this prohibition. "This election shouldn't be about how creatively one can approach a candidate statement or how innovatively one can put up posters," Jaitly said. "This election should be about expressing your past experiences at Princeton."

Adrienne Rubin '88, associate director for class affairs and the person in charge of managing the election, could not be reached for comment.