Presidential campaign heats up

A year after then-presidential contender Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 outlined a bold vision of civic engagement and service that he hoped would redefine the USG, the seven presidential candidates vying to succeed him are different in style but similar in substance.

They range from sitting USG members who tout their experience and accomplishments to a complete outsider promising to bring a fresh perspective.

A few themes dominate the campaign. This is the year, candidates agree, to participate in shaping the four-year residential colleges and mount an organized response to the grading policies now in place. This is the year, most say, to establish PINS as a lasting tradition — but allow the USG president to work on other issues.

And while many faulted USG president Joseph for focusing too much time on service, there were few sweeping criticisms of the USG.

The Daily Princetonian sat down this week with the seven candidates to talk about their visions for the position.

Tom Brown

As undergraduate life chair and former executive secretary, Brown boasts the most experience of all the candidates. He said that knowledge, combined with working relationships with the administration, is what would make him the most effective leader.

Like many of the candidates, Brown emphasized the introduction of four-year residential colleges and the new grade deflation policy as the most pressing concerns facing the school.

The four-year residential colleges need to be "a new addition to the campus that doesn't adversely affect the eating clubs," he said. "I think the eating clubs have a place on this campus, I think Spelman has a place on this campus, I think four-year colleges have a place on this campus. This campus needs to provide opportunities for undergraduate students separated in these residential colleges to come together." Making Campus Club a social space is one way to bring the campus together, he added.

Brown prides himself on being the only candidate to have taken concerns about the grade deflation policy to Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel. He pledged to work with administrators to tailor the plan to student concerns.

Among his ideas are ensuring that professors don't apply the grade deflation policy section by section, urging preceptors to write substantive comments on graded work and instituting a common policy of returning written work to student mailboxes at the end of the semester.

Some of Brown's other proposals include new backup servers for the Point website and the Student Course Guide, a wireless network for Firestone and a WikiFAQ on the Point website where students can post questions and USG members will respond.

Like his opponents, Brown has a mixed view of Joseph's performance. "He was so focused on PINS that he didn't focus on as many other issues as we should have," Brown said. "Don't get me wrong; Leslie's been a tireless president. But he focused on PINS to the detriment of some other issues."

Campus eating disorders and sexual assaults are among other problems Brown hopes to address. "There has not been enough discussion on this campus about SHARE, about the prevalence of eating disorders," he said. "The fact of the matter is eight percent of students have an eating disorder — that's eight percent too many."

Freddy Flaxman

Flaxman, co-founder of the 1,000-strong Jadwin Jungle, wants to lead Princeton outside of Jadwin Gymnasium, too.

Calling inadequate representation of various groups "USG's greatest failure," Flaxman outlined a plan to restructure the USG by adding athlete and independent student representative positions.

Flaxman's boldest proposal is a Student Bill of Rights, which will require professors to return work in a timely manner and with satisfactory feedback, explain how grades are calculated and consider reassessing assignments.

"The USG can organize itself and reach a concrete goal that can actually have an effect on students," he said of the response to grade deflation. "Most of the [grade deflation] stress comes from the fact that the graded differences between two students' work is very arbitrary. We need to safeguard against irresponsible grading in this manner."

Flaxman shares the other candidates' support for PINS and is promoting a community service project of his own called Clothes for Clinics, which will run free athletic camps for children.

But he criticized Joseph on other grounds. "Leslie came into office with a number of grandiose projects," he said. "I would have hoped to see more concrete results come from his administration."

He emphasized that in a successful government, the constituents must be informed and those in power must be accountable. "You don't know everything that USG does," he said. "If the [USG wants] to represent the student body as a whole, it needs to get feedback from students. The USG is accountable to students and must go to them. I go door to door and students don't know a lot about who to go to."

Jeremy Johnson

Johnson thinks a campus-wide subscription to Napster, the centerpiece of his platform, will be music to students' ears.

The U-Councilor said Princeton should follow the example of 17 other colleges and purchase the service to make downloading media convenient and risk-free. The cost might amount to as little as $5 per student, he said, and would be well worth avoiding lawsuits.

Johnson said he is rethinking campus energy use and looking into dorm thermostats and rooftop solar panels as ways to save the University money.

Johnson also stressed financial aid for eating clubs. "It's something that's very important to me because I feel the financial aid policy for the university is phenomenal and brings in an incredible diversity, the benefits of which we throw away because the social hub doesn't have the same egalitarian philosophy," he said.

"The only way to integrate the four-year colleges that makes sense — to make the student body more, not less cohesive — is to have eating club financial aid," he added, mentioning that the USG could raise the majority of the money needed from alumni.

Johnson said that he will continue Joseph's current Princeton in the Nation's Service (PINS) project, but will do a better job of delegating responsibility for it than Joseph did.

"Leslie came in with extraordinarily lofty ideas," he said. "He spent so much time on PINS and race relations that he wasn't able to do either really well, which was unfortunate for him. As it stood, he split himself too much."

It was Johnson's time as a U-Councilor that inspired him to run for student body president. "[It] just reaffirmed why I love Princeton," he said. "Over the past six months, there have been a lot of ideas churning around in my head that I think would be phenomenal for Princeton."

Alex Lenahan

Well before the demise of Campus Club, Lenahan was exploring the possibility of a social alternative on the Street. When the club closed this past summer, he reached out to club alumni and administrators to ensure that the space would stay in the hands of students.

As a Class of 2007 Senator, Lenahan lobbied to improve students' lives in small ways. It was his questioning that prompted OIT to double email storage space, and he has worked to get proxes accepted as payment off campus.

But, Lenahan says, he has bigger plans, which is why he's running for president.

"There are certain sorts of things you can do really well as a senator ... but some of the larger issues are hard to address," he said. "I have a lot of good ideas about the direction that Princeton should be taking."

This new direction will involve greater USG involvement in the four-year residential college and grade deflation controversies.

Lenahan is the only candidate urging students to consider not only how the policy is being implemented, but also whether there should be a policy at all.

"All the talk in the USG is about how it's being implemented, but the fundamental question is whether we should have a policy," he said. "We really need to not look at this policy as something that's set in stone but look at [whether] it should or shouldn't be at Princeton."

To better inform the grade deflation debate, Lenahan proposes polling students on their views and related concerns, such as stress and academic competition.

Lenahan, who coauthored the Survey on Race published in February, says persistence is one of his strengths.

He also said he would expand PINS but refocus the USG's attention on other issues. "PINS has just been [Joseph's] primary focus," he said. "The main purpose of USG is to be a voice for Princeton students primarily on things relating to Princeton."

The USG should have had this purpose in mind when addressing the Princeton Justice Project on gay marriage, Lenahan said. "I myself agree with the brief," he said. "[But] in the future, it's better if groups like that go through the referendum process, and that way it's organic and organized and not the USG trying to decide things like that."

Lenahan said he would refocus the organization to be more receptive to students. "I made it clear to my class [as Senator] that I wanted as much student opinion as possible," he said. "Probably half the things I worked on were from people in my class because they felt comfortable contacting me. The USG will ultimately be only as powerful as the students make it."

Will Scharf

Scharf is the only sophomore running for president — an unconventional move with an unconventional campaign to match.

"I represent the average angry student on campus, the student who is not happy with the way things are on campus, the student who thinks the USG is not representing him or her, the student who thinks the administration is doing a horrible job," he said.

"You have a lot of students at this school who are angry and who are pissed off with they way things are going. I represent those students with this campaign."

Scharf said he's running because he wants broad USG reform, something his website's background song, The Beatles' "Revolution," alludes to. These reforms include appointing USG representatives for independent students, religious students and athletes, some of the groups whose voices Scharf said the USG doesn't hear.

His platform opposes grade deflation and seeks to reform both the residential college disciplinary system and the fire code.

Scharf also criticized the USG for ignoring drainage problems on campus, which he said he would work with engineers to address.

He is particularly wary of the new four-year residential colleges, which he said could shut down eating clubs, and the effects of enlarging the student body, which he said haven't been properly examined.

Sharf said his lack of USG experience works to his advantage.

"[My opponents are] sitting around talking broad ideals right now. They're saying these are the biggest problems confronting the school today. They've had an entire year and they've just have not done anything," he said.

Scharf's governing philosophy is clear: "If elected, I'll be a forceful advocate for student concerns, and I'm not going to pull any punches — I'm going to tell it like it is."

Carol Wang

As PINS coordinator, Wang is making campus unity through community service the centerpiece of her campaign.

"I saw through PINS how service really brought everyone together and how it was something that everyone can do," she said. "And that's really important to tackle the divisions I see on campus."

"The most important thing PINS needs is a culture that recognizes students are here at Princeton not just for taking classes but for actively using what they're learning in class," she added.

True to her campaign theme, Wang said she wants to make Frist a better meeting place for students and keep it a social hub even if four-year residential colleges draw students away.

Wang said she thinks the four-year residential colleges will strain relations between students of different socioeconomic levels and races. They will also limit interaction between students in different classes, she said, since Frist will no longer be a central meeting place.

"I see four-year residential colleges as being a real threat to the socioeconomic divisions we have on campus right now," Wang said. "They undermine the open, unified campus that we all want."

For these reasons, she said she wants students to oversee the opening of the new residential colleges. "I want a specific student committee that sits down with Dean Malkiel to make sure the student voice is heard every step along the way," Wang said.

She said she'll focus on PINS as a way of uniting the school. "Working on PINS has given me the opportunity to work with practically every single part of campus. PINS is a month, but what PINS stands for goes to the heart of what we're here at Princeton for."

Chris Willis

Founder of the discussion board Tigerforum.net, Willis is running on a platform of better communication between the student body and the USG.

Willis, a Class of 2007 Senator for the past two years, said that USG procedures isolate senators, making it difficult for them to represent students.

"The vice president has consistently sort of strong-armed the Senate," he said. "Institutionally, the senators have been hindered — it's been cumulative each year, as far as I see it."

A senatorial chair on the USG executive committee would give senators a greater role in USG policymaking, he added.

Willis also said he'll go door-to-door, compiling complaints and posting them online. "This will change the face of the USG because everyone will have a stake in the USG," he said. "Also, the USG will be constantly addressing student issues as opposed to being an esoteric body apart from students."

Willis' other main concerns include eating club financial aid and grade deflation.

"I know a lot of people are running on this platform [of increased financial aid for eating clubs], but I coauthored a study on race my sophomore year, and from that we saw the obvious overlap between low-income students and minority students," he said. "If we have increased financial aid for eating club, we will have a better social atmosphere on the Street."

With regard to grade inflation, he said he wants Malkiel to release more data and make graduate students and professors properly follow the grade deflation policy.

Related stories:

— Your candidates for vice president (Nov. 30, 2005)