The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/student-elected_trustee/)
Candidates for Student-Elected Trustee discuss their plans for addressing mental health issues, affordability and other critical issues for the University in their debate.
Currently a master’s student, Davis-Frost ran on a platform that stressed, among other goals, establishing an anti-racism institute on campus, providing free menstrual products and making greater investments in Student Disability Services.
JT Baker ’21, a football player who ran for student-elected trustee, was disqualified because of an email a Cornell Athletics official sent alerting athletes to Baker’s campaign and encouraging them to vote in the election.
Cornell football players expressed their anger on Wednesday that their teammate was disqualified from the student-elected trustee election.
Cornell President Martha E. Pollack and Board of Trustees Chair Robert Harrison ’76 said Tuesday that a committee was wrong to disqualify an undergraduate student trustee candidate from the race.
With 2386 votes, Sim was elected by a 1025-vote margin over the closest candidate, Laurence Minter ’21. Sim will assume the position from Dustin Liu ’19 and will begin his two-year term in the fall semester.
Just a few weeks ago, 10 candidates took to the campus quads, Willard Straight Hall and social media feeds to campaign for the undergraduate position of Student-Elected Trustee. We saw 39.9 percent of undergraduates — a 13 percentage point increase from last year — fill out the Qualtrics survey that also included slots for positions such as Student Assembly President and Executive Vice President. Elections closed on Wednesday, March 27 at 2 p.m.
The results rolled out: Joe Anderson ’20 as Student Assembly President, Cat Huang ’20 as Student Assembly Executive Vice President — and 13 days of radio silence from the Trustee Nominating Committee. For 13 days, the Nominating Committee has failed to report any results from the 2019 Trustee election. They have numbers and they have results, given that results for President and EVP were promptly released.
Cornell University’s Board of Trustees is unique in its inclusion of students as full voting members. Of our Ivy League peers, we are the only one to seat students on our Board even though many other student communities have argued for a similar position. Other academic institutions may allow students to elect a representative to serve on their Board, but Cornell is one of the few institutions to seat not one but two students. One student-elected trustee must be an undergraduate student while the other must be either a graduate or a professional student. Regardless of their academic status, both student-elected trustees represent the student community as a whole.
Dara Brown ’13 law ’18 looked back on her time as a student-elected trustee and on important issues facing the University in an interview with The Sun, encouraging students to “get involved in something they’re passionate about.”
After several weeks of chalking, handing out quarter cards and waving a flag outside Libe Café, Asa Craig ’11 has been elected as the newest undergraduate student trustee for Cornell, the Office of the Assemblies announced yesterday.
Out of the 3,423 ballots cast for the 10 candidates, Craig was ranked first on 651 of those ballots. Using the Hare-Clark system, the candidate with the least amount of votes is systematically eliminated. The eliminated candidates’ votes are then transferred to other candidates depending on the rankings of voters’ preferences. In the end, Craig defeated Raymond Mensah ’11 with a final count of 1,578 votes.