Today, students begin voting for their representatives to the Undergraduate Student Government, including, among others, the USG president and vice president. Three candidates are running for president: Catherine Ettman ’13, Bruce Easop ’13 and Shikha Uberoi ’13. Two candidates are running for vice president: Merik Mulcahy ’13 and Stephen Stolzenberg ’13. Though all of the candidates have much to offer the student body, the Editorial Board endorses Ettman for president and Mulcahy for vice president.
As the officer in charge of the operations of the USG, the president has two chief tasks: to set an overarching vision for the USG’s activities during his or her tenure and to take the lead in working with both the University administration and the student body to implement USG policy proposals. We endorse Ettman because we believe she is the candidate most likely to succeed at each half of this mission. To begin, Ettman offered a three-part vision for the USG focused on academics, social cohesion and student health. Her platform balances smaller, more easily achieved objectives — such as working to improve access to healthy food choices on campus — with broader, more ambitious goals, such as working to reform attitudes towards and treatment for mental health problems on campus. The Editorial Board was particularly impressed with her plan for a campus-wide mentorship program based on a system currently used with great success at Oxford as well as her proposal to improve academic advising at Princeton. Ettman’s plans also leave room for other stakeholders in the USG to shape policy over the coming year. Yaroshefsky’s administration has been more productive at developing important projects that the USG can actually accomplish than many past student governments, and we are confident that Ettman can continue this trend. In addition, we think her skills would be particularly useful at the current juncture, given the recent turnover in key administrative positions in Nassau Hall; she has the opportunity to focus not only on small improvements to student life but also to place major issues on the agenda.
Second, we believe that Ettman’s experience both within and without the USG will best enable her to implement these policy changes. Change on campus is accomplished through collaboration between students and administrators, so in order for the USG to be effective, it is necessary that its officers be able to work productively with the University and convince administrators of the importance of various student interests. As USG vice president for the past year, Ettman has developed the close relationship with administrators needed to represent the student perspective to the University. Furthermore, she served on the Steering Committee for Women’s Leadership and spent the previous summer interning in the office of the Vice President for Campus Life, giving her familiarity with many University administrators with whom she would be required to work. She is the candidate with the most potential to develop a strong and cooperative relationship with the University administration. Furthermore, Ettman’s past accomplishments demonstrate her ability to get things done in student government. She led the Campus Community Challenge, ran USG Senate meetings and helped lead the Academic Life Total Assessment committee. These experiences differentiate Ettman from the competition, and they should smooth the transition between USG administrations.
While we do believe that Ettman is the best choice in this race, we were also impressed with the other candidates in the race. In particular, we found many of the ideas that Bruce Easop brought to the race for president compelling, such as Tiger2Tiger.com, a website for students to share advice with one another. While only one candidate may win this race, all three have much to contribute to campus discourse, and we hope that all will continue to do so regardless of the election’s outcome.
Unlike the president, the vice president’s responsibilities primarily concern the efficiency and structure of the USG. As the chair of the Senate, the VP is responsible for ensuring that the USG functions smoothly internally so that it is best able to accomplish its goals on campus more generally. We believe that Mulcahy is the candidate best suited for this task. His platform indicates his recognition that the VP’s job is distinct from that of most USG members and requires a focus on administrative and structural issues over policy goals. He intends to focus both on increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of work within the USG and on improving the functioning of the USG by building stronger connections between the USG and the broader student body. These connections would both elicit student input to refine USG policy ideas and promote the dissemination of information to make USG efforts most useful to the students whom they ought to be helping. Both his vision for the structural role of the VP position and his particular plans for his tenure in the position make Mulcahy the most compelling VP candidate.
His past experience also makes him best suited to fill the role of VP. In his time in the USG, he has served on numerous committees and chaired the U-Council. This extensive experience working within the structure of student government will best prepare him to oversee that structure in his capacity as VP. Furthermore, he has captured the endorsements of the majority of those USG Senators who have endorsed a candidate this election cycle, indicating that those whose work he would manage as VP believe he has in the past shown his competence in the skills required by the position. Furthermore, many of the projects he has supervised while in the USG, such as the COMBO III survey and the soon-to-be-launched student groups hub, closely relate to the goals of communication between USG and students that he would pursue as VP.
All of the candidates running in these two races have advanced ideas that make a valuable contribution to the work of student government at Princeton. While we hope that all will continue to work for the betterment of campus life, we believe that Ettman and Mulcahy are likely to use the positions of president and VP to best effect, and thus we urge students to vote for them in this election.
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