Lawrence Committee vote marred by dispute

After weeks of heated controversy, culminating in the intervention of Graduate School deans, select residents of the Lawrence graduate student apartment complex cast their ballots Monday night to choose members of the Lawrence Committee.

The committee, which organizes social events and aims to address residents' concerns, consists of seven members elected by Lawrence residents. These members receive priority in housing, a significant bonus in light of chronic graduate housing shortages.

This year's elections became embroiled in conflict and contention. Realizations surfaced mid-cycle that the committee neglected to observe its own constitutional procedures, which invalidated most of the candidates' right to vote, much less run for office.

After an effort to reform the constitution in 2004 was left uncompleted, the committee's constitution as it currently stands limits eligible voters to Lawrence residents who have attended at least two committee meetings prior to the election. It also stipulates that committee members must be reelected every year.

These rules have been ignored, past committee president Patrick Murphy GS said in an e-mail. This year, and for the past five years, an e-mail was sent to Lawrence residents requesting that anyone interested in becoming a residence committee member come to an informational meeting prior to launching a campaign. After candidacies are declared, all Lawrence residents then cast their ballots, regardless of their level of previous affiliation with or work for the committee.

According to the constitution, however, most of this year's candidates, who had already begun campaigning, were not even eligible to vote because they did not attend enough meetings. The constitution also stipulates that all seats be up for election every year, but in past years, residents never voted to reelect incumbents. Rather, elected members who wished to stay on the committee would retain their positions.

The committee became aware of the procedural inconsistencies a day before the March 12 informational meeting, when Melanie Wood GS, who was running for a committee position, brought the issue to Murphy's attention.

"I was quite surprised when I walked into the room [on March 12]," Lawrence resident Yaron Ayalon GS said, because attendance had swelled from the typical seven or eight people to around 20, as people with no previous experience on the committee gathered to announce their intentions to run for a seat.

Ayalon's fiance, Keren Leiby, was just elected to be the liaison between the Lawrence Apartments and the Graduate Student Government and had been heavily involved with the Lawrence Committee throughout the year.

Wood, who has since been elected social chair, organized several projects for the committee throughout the year. At the March 12 meeting, she reiterated her concerns, and Murphy, after discussing them with committee members, appealed to the Graduate School's administration, which holds authority over all graduate student housing committees.

The result was a "compromise" between the letter of the law and past practice, Lawrence Committee recording secretary Charles Lu GS said. The administration allowed the candidates to count the March 12 meeting and Monday's election meeting as the two meetings required for voting. The open voting process, though, was eliminated to comply with constitutional election procedures. All committee seats, including those held by returning members, were put up for election.

"The grad school looked at our situation and said that we had to follow the constitution because it was written," Lu said. "It's not perfect, but it was a compromise." The committee was under enormous pressure to make a decision and proceed with elections, he explained, "given that there were two weeks and the housing deadline was coming up."

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The perks of office

Ayalon, though, felt that many of the candidates who had not been involved with the committee were interested more in the housing advantages than in legitimately serving the Lawrence community.

"I'm sure not many people would run for that committee if they weren't going to keep their housing," Ayalon said.

Housing is a constant worry for graduate students. Because the University hasn't been able to meet the demand for housing, graduate students in their third, fourth and fifth years might not receive University housing, Schmidt explained.

Since housing allocation is dependent on one's year and previous living situation, Wood said, having the sort of priority offered by a seat on the Lawrence Committee is extremely beneficial.

"There is no question that many people are running entirely for that incentive because all of a sudden when it was time to run all these people showed up who hadn't even come to the Lawrence sponsored events in the past," she said. "It's certainly not true for everyone, but there's no question for some people that's an incentive."

Without an attendance requirement, Ayalon noted, an open election would turn into a "popularity contest" among people solely interested in the tangible benefits of membership, rather than a platform and issue-based election.

This may be the case for some candidates, said Spencer Quiel GS, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the committee. But the housing perk is necessary to ensure that the interests of Lawrence residents are represented, he added.

"It's up to the voters to discern who is there to serve and who's not," he said.

The disenfranchised

As a result of the Graduate School's decision, however, most of the graduate students in the Lawrence apartment complex received an e-mail informing them that they were not eligible to vote, Ben Schmidt GS, a Lawrence resident, explained.

Schmidt, who found out that he was ineligible to vote, was "frustrated" by the change in policy after campaigning had already begun.

"I saw all these campaign posters going up," he said, "and you felt that moment of accountability and creativity and fresh ideas was about to come." Too often, Schmidt explained, campus government groups tend to be "small bureaucratic cliques," and he was optimistic at the prospect of an open, transparent election cycle.

These hopes were apparently dashed when Schmidt subsequently learned that he and the hundreds of residents of the Lawrence apartments would be chosen by only the 20 people who met the agreed-upon rules.

"To try to build a community without letting everyone participate in basic procedures that supposedly govern seems bizarre," he said. "I don't know how [the graduate school] can get the most accurate information about the concerns of Lawrence residents if they don't make the committee the most representative body it can be."

Wood explained, though, that voter turnout has been historically low, mainly limited to candidates, their spouses and their friends.

"It's not clear that the old system was providing a robust democracy," she said. "To have a democracy, you have to have people to vote."

Yet, Lawrence resident Ryan Davis GS acknowledged that the Graduate School placed the committee in an awkward position.

"[The committee was] placed in a position where there were the rules on the one side and the disenfranchising of people on the other," he said.

Grad. School intervention

While the Lawrence Committee is beholden to the Graduate School for funding and housing administration, some graduate students are displeased with the Graduate School's intrusion into the lives of Lawrence residents.

"They intervened in the process and did one good thing to improve the elections by opening all the positions but did one very bad thing by restricting the voting to those who had attended previous meetings," Quiel said.

Quiel also ran for a position on the committee last year, when all Lawrence residents could vote for positions left vacant by members leaving the University. He had been frustrated, he explained, by the "self-perpetuating closed process" that surrounded last year's elections and appreciated the Graduate School's efforts to open up all positions.

Schmidt said, however, that the concomitant decision to limit the number of voters is hard to justify.

"Why the grad school would go about [resolving this issue] in a way that makes the Lawrence Committee directly less responsive to the members of Lawrence is completely baffling," he said.

While the decision was frustrating, the Lawrence Committee is still reliant on the grad school for funding and housing preferences, Lu explained, and it is appropriate that the views of the Graduate School are taken into account.

"At the present time, it's unlikely that we are going to be completely independent [of the grad school]," he said.

For Leiby, the Graduate School's intervention is only natural. "In the end of the day, they are the ones who support the committee," she said. "It's their right to have a say in what happens."

Legacy

Some candidates were also upset at what they perceived to be pandering to the desires of candidates who had been heavily involved in the committee and who felt threatened by the number of potential opponents.

"The democratic elections were disrupted by a cynical maneuver of some of the candidates, who, rather than suggesting in advance to amend the constitution and allow everyone to vote, waited until the last moment, when it was already too late to change the constitution, and tried to disqualify the other candidates," Yiftah Elazar GS, who ran unsuccessfully for a Lawrence Committee seat, said in an e-mail.

The candidates who were known and familiar with the committee, he said, felt entitled to the vacant seats on the committee and tried to sidestep the democratic process.

"The Committee and the Graduate School, rather than seeing through the scheme and working creatively to amend the constitution, played into [committee insiders'] hands, disenfranchised the Lawrence community and turned the elections into an internal affair," he said.

Wood, however, denied feeling that she had a right to a seat on the Lawrence Committee.

"There's no question that I hoped my work for the community would encourage people to vote for me," she explained. Though she emphasized her previous projects in the campaign flyers she posted prior to the announcement of the suspension of the election, "I don't think that entitled me to their votes," Wood said.

Wood added she was not involved in the compromise and said that the disenfranchisement of Lawrence residents meant that she lost "many advocates who [did] not get to vote."

Leiby said that she decided to become familiar with the committee early in the year to become familiar with the operations of the organization that influenced life in Lawrence Apartments. Leiby, who read the constitution and the bylaws of the committee, said, "It's open for every resident to do the same."

"I felt that I had the right to run, and I ran just as any other candidate did," she explained. "I was hoping that I would get chosen for the spot, but I was just as nervous as anybody else."

Amendments

E-mails regarding the matter still flood the inboxes of Lawrence residents. Some e-mail authors have even called for the invalidation of the election results in favor of a completely new campaign cycle.

"We will continue to hear complaints, mostly really negative ones, in the near future because people are not happy," Lu said. "But we need to move on."

The inadequacies of the election process were discussed prominently at Monday night's elections, Davis said. "I felt like it was most agreed on at the end of the meeting was the need to create some sort of revision."

Lu emphasized that the work of the committee is a continually evolving process. "We're striving to make this process more open, transparent, so that this process doesn't repeat itself in the future," he said.