Even as the rising junior class struggles to find a single slate to run, competition has appeared for the senior class presidents. Senior Shore, a reprise of this past year’s Junior Shore slate (which, in turn, was a reprise of So-phly, trading Isabelle Wijangco ’12 for Cody Sam ’12), is now confronted by Senior Citizen, a slate composed of Amy Kroll, Shruthi Baskaran, Jack Trotter, and MK Li. (Senior Citizen perhaps inadvertently borrowing its name from 2005, which in turned borrowed it from 2003, but it’s a fun name nonetheless.)
I originally came on here to write an article about how this is a common pattern – heavy competition at the sophomore and senior levels with less competition at the junior level – but it took looking at old elections records to find the pattern.
What do the numbers tell us?
I looked at election results from 2000-2010 (minus 2004), the years for which we have well-defined results.
Average number of sophomore slates: 3.3 slates/year
Average number of junior slates: 1.4 slates/year
Average number of senior slates: 2.3 slates/year
It’s clear that junior year is less popular overall, as students want to go abroad or otherwise disengage. However, what is most interesting are the number of years for which there is no competition. Let’s explore:
Sophomore slates: 0 years
Junior slates: 6 years (60 percent)
Senior slates: 3 years (30 percent)
From these numbers, it’s clear that junior year is not a popular time to be running. Thus, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it’s finally come to pass that no one is running for junior class president this year. Changing the rules so as to make the position more attractive may be key to making it a more competitive race.
