StuCo Candidates Offer Statements

Following the Student Council (StuCo) primary elections on Friday, uppers Charlotte Lisa and Senai Robinson advanced to the final voting round for the StuCo presidential election. Uppers Seth Amofa and Sonny Fiteni were announced as the finalists for Vice President, and lower Siona Jain and upper Phil Horrigan were appointed Co-Secretaries. 

The candidates advancing to the final rounds of StuCo elections discussed their candidacies with The Exonian. 

Charlotte Lisa

Lisa believed her three years of experience with StuCo demonstrated her dedication and commitment to the group. “I’ve been in StuCo for my entire time at Exeter, and I am confident that I will be putting in my best work every week. I’m ready for large scale and small scale initiatives, and I have faith that I will communicate effectively between the administration and students,” she said.

She hoped to continue successful initiatives inaugurated under the previous Executive Board, for which she served as co-Secretary. “Last spring, there was a student sit-in in Jeremiah Smith Hall regarding sexual misconduct. Over this past summer, the administration worked really hard with Exonians Against Sexual Assault (EASA) to redo the Sexual Misconduct policy. During the fall, the board was able to provide input and revise until it was officially transcribed in the E Book,” she said.

Lisa observed strong organization during 2019-2020 Student Council President Ayush Noori’s tenure. “One of the biggest things that I’ve seen this year done by Ayush is the delegation of tasks to committees. The presidential platform is important because as President, you organize and orchestrate the Council in the most effective and and efficient way possible,” Lisa said. 

Senai Robinson

Robinson grounded his platform in a promise to “change the Vs policy, bring EP back on Tuesdays [and to] have more community events such as fall term Homecoming and Dorm Olympics,” he said.

Robinson intends to create Mental Awareness Day, a day to educate students on mental health in a similar fashion to MLK Day. “Exonians are either affected by mental illnesses, do not know much about mental illnesses, or both,” he said.

To display his competence in enacting change, Robinson mentioned his involvement in the appointment of Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett and Counselor Marco A. Thompson. “As a board member of the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society (ALES), I advocated for their arrival,” he said. “I have the experience of bringing the community together and implementing change.”

Additionally, Robinson emphasized his empathy with marginalized voices on campus. “I have experience of feeling that my opinion is being silenced—of being unheard.” 

Seth Amofa

Amofa aims to “strengthen the community between students on campus.” While he has enjoyed discussions about bold and revolutionary policies, “StuCo should shift its focus to making simple, feasible and meaningful changes on campus,” he said. Amofa’s proposals include low homework weekends every term and a school-wide dorm league. 

Amofa believes that due to the “busy workload on campus, most students become stressed and experience some degree of negative mental health every term. I believe a great way to work at combating mental health is through altering the workload.” 

To gain an understanding of the practicality of implementing a low homework weekend, Amofa said he has spoken to faculty members, including English Instructor Rebecca Moore, Science Instructor Jeffrey Ward and Religion Department Chair Hannah Hofheinz. According to Amofa, these teachers communicated that it would be “very easy to implement low homework weekends into their curriculums.”

If elected, Amofa promised to ensure the longevity of his policies. “I will push for my policy of low homework weekends to be officially established in the E Book with clear guidelines for teachers to follow and ensure that they don’t misuse the policy,” he said. “This would be a strong step towards promoting student well-being as a vital part of the Exeter experience.”

In regards to the intra-campus community, Amofa has noticed that, “There isn’t much of an identity between dorms on campus besides the North and South side. School-wide dorm leagues will foster camaraderie and bring fun back on campus.”

Sonny Fiteni

While the defining proposal of Fiteni’s platform is the Mental Health Day initiative, Fiteni noted that his appeal lies in his experience in “getting things done.” 

“The poor approach of StuCo towards proposing policy is the number one reason that we haven’t seen any real change in years. This will not change unless we begin to understand how policy gets approved—only when it agrees with the faculty’s own agenda. We have to speak to the faculty perspective,” he said. 

Fiteni noted that a Mental Health Day proposal connects with both of these points. Within this policy, a student can sign in at the Health Center on one day per term of their choosing and “do whatever you need to recover.” However, he added that, along with excused absences, the initiative would be fleshed out and supported by auxiliary support systems which would grant extensions and stagger deadlines so that students could genuinely spend the day without worrying about work.

To Fiteni, Mental Health Day would substantially alleviate the stresses of the Exeter student experience. “Mental Health Days, especially ones we schedule for ourselves, are necessary to break up the monotony of Exonian life,” he said.  His policy draws from the sentiments that “mental health doesn’t choose a convenient time to act up. ” 

When breaks are scheduled, Fiteni noted, teachers assign more work at certain points before or after these lulls, resulting in more concentrated periods of stress. “Often teachers build work around [these] scheduled long weekends, which creates these situations of high pressure commitment zones,” Fiteni said. “We need a reactionary support system to allow students to get the help they need when they need it.”

The final round of elections for the Executive Board will occur in the Phelps Commons this Friday, Feb. 21, from 10:20a.m.-6:45p.m.