Contender for mayorship holds meeting for students

The campaign team of Jill Jachera, the Republican candidate for the Princeton Borough mayorship, held a meeting at 9 p.m. on Wednesday in Guyot 10. Around 20 University students attended the meeting.

A community leader and former lawyer, Jachera is running in what will be the first contested election in 12 years. Jachera founded and runs the St. Nicholas Project, is a member of the Princeton YWCA and works as a consultant on performance management and employment diversity projects.

Jachera and her team discussed issues such as the possible consolidation of the Borough and Township, the University’s proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood, bringing undercover police officers to Prospect Avenue and increasing student engagement in Borough affairs.

According to Jachera, only 98 students voted in the 2010 Borough elections in all polling stations even though students make up around 40 percent of the Borough’s population.

Students, however, also expressed their disappointment with the Borough’s ambivalence toward increasing student involvement in its decision-making processes.

“It’s my third year and I’ve never seen any interest coming from the Borough,” Siofra Robinson ’13 said.

During the meeting, Jachera emphasized that her campaign team is composed of Independents, Democrats and Republicans.

“Our motto is to put Princeton before Party,” she said. “It’s about figuring out who can do the best job.”

Thomas Senecal, a self-described Democrat who has previously worked on Democratic campaigns, expressed a similar view of the campaign, remembering an email he once received from Princeton College Democrats.

“They were concerned about keeping the town blue,” he said of the group. “I think that’s the wrong way to go about it — you need to think about what’s best for the University and the Borough.”

Politics graduate student Joshua Vandiver and his husband Henry Velandia are both campaigning for Jachera. Vandiver spoke out against Democratic candidate Yina Moore ’79, explaining that he feels she had not contributed toward the advancement of the Arts and Transit Neighborhood despite having been on the regional planning board for the past decade.

“Yina Moore has been on the planning board but she hasn’t helped it,” Vandiver said.

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Other students expressed excitement about Jachera’s campaign.

“She sort of resonates this idea of really getting people involved and fixing issues by being personable rather than pushing issues,” said Anthony Pappenfus ’13, who has been working on Jachera’s campaign since the beginning of summer.

Meanwhile, Senecal said that he had gotten involved with Jachera’s campaign because he was displeased with “how the Borough treats Princeton students.”

“I was shocked to learn that Princeton Borough — a town of a only few thousand people — has 50 or 60 cops,” he said.

Senecal also expressed disappointment with the undercover officers on Prospect Avenue.

“My question is, can we really have nothing better to do with that money than nab drunken students when we do have our own police force, [Public Safety]?” he said.

Vandiver echoed these sentiments and added that he felt it was “not cost effective” for the Borough to have so many undercover cops.

Princeton College Democrat spresident Jarrah O’Neill ’13 could not be reached for comment.