The Lawrence University Community Council (LUCC) held a class representative election on Monday, Sept. 26. The results were announced on Thursday, Sept. 29. Usually there are four class representatives per grade level, but after this election the juniors only have two representatives, and the seniors have zero.
Elections for sophomores, juniors and seniors were set for spring term but an email from LUCC on Wednesday, June 1, 2022, stated that they would be pushed off due to students being too busy to run or think about the upcoming school year.
First-year Jasmine Mcgee, one of the four class representatives for the first-year class, said she was very excited about her new position because she wants to make a change on campus. She is looking forward to being a part of LUCC and has an interest in the Committee on Diversity Affairs (CODA) committee. Mcgee is hoping to give more recognition to diversity organizations. She said that Lawrence should not depend on clubs to celebrate diversity but that we should be celebrating diversity as an entire campus. The other first-year class representatives are Emma Moya, CJ Gilliam and Cormac Billick.
The sophomore class is the only other class to secure four class representatives: Isabel Dorn, Sherilyn Patterson, Hayden Young and Mohamed Khalil Ben Nasr. Dorn said she hopes LUCC will devote more attention to the Student Welfare Committee because she believes it does a lot of great work without enough recognition. The Student Welfare Committee deals with student concerns through legislation in LUCC. Dorn is passionate about improving student life and making campus a more welcoming environment by giving more recognition to diversity organizations like the Pan-Asian Organization (PAO).
The junior class has two class representatives, Rowan Tipping and Jonathan Dahl. Last year during spring term, Tipping took over for another class representative and he said it helped spark his interest to run this year. Dahl had been interested in student government since high school and was excited to be a part of LUCC this year.
“I was looking to do a bit more on campus and [LUCC] was really appealing to me,” Dahl said.
Both Tipping and Dahl were very vocal about wanting to improve housing for this year. They said it was one of the biggest issues facing students, especially because Lawrence is a residential campus.
As of now the seniors have no class representatives. Dorn said that when deciding whether or not to run, she was worried about the time commitment. Tipping said he formatted his schedule to be able to fit in LUCC but felt that the time commitment could have been a barrier to seniors who wanted to run.
LUCC President Malcolm Davis commented that many seniors who might have been interested in running weren’t able to due to study abroad and other time commitments that might clash with their schedules. Davis added that LUCC is looking to recruit representatives from the senior class and that if there is enough interest, they will hold a special election to fill the seats.
“It’s a rough place to be but we’ll keep trying,” Davis said.