More candidates entering election

By TRACY WILSON
Collegian Staff Writer

Students will be seeing more senatorial candidate choices on their voting ballots this year for the upcoming Undergraduate Student Government elections.

About twice as many students than usual have signed out petitions for USG Senate candidacy, said USG President Caroline Casagrande.

Casagrande attributes the increased interest to students wishing to improve the Senate after a series of problems this year.

"Students got fed up with the behavior in the Senate this year," she said. "People want to join to do anything they can to make things run more smoothly."

Competition may also increase due to recent changes in the elections code, which make fraternity members eligible for all town senate seats. Previously, fraternity members could only run for one fraternity Senate seat, which will be eliminated next year with the code changes.

Fraternity Senator James Hornick said several fraternity members expressed interest in running for Senate positions at a recent Interfraternity Council meeting. He anticipates more fraternity interest than in previous years.

"Fraternity people are definitely trying to get more involved than in the past because the playing field is level now," he said.

Some students are concerned about keeping the number of greeks on USG in proportion to the number of greeks in the student population to ensure fairness in representation of issues.

"More people should realize that people who run for USG don't have to be in fraternities or sororities," Katie Sallitt (senior-English) said. "A lot of people think USG is some sort of greek thing."

"A lot of university (activities) tend to alienate nongreeks, like homecoming and dance marathon. The big things seem to be more conducive to students involved with the greek system."