On Monday, January 26, an eager group of Uppers congregated in Kemper Auditorium to learn about running for school president. Current School President, Malin Adams ’09, Vice President William Thompson-Butler ’09 and Executive Secretary Lawrence Dai ’09 outlined the process that students would go through during the presidential election, offered advice and answered questions. Next week, February 2 through February 9, candidates will collect student signatures and write their platforms. This year students will be restricted to a $50 budget for the entire campaign, which will mostly be used for printing posters, according to Adams. Starting this year, candidates are advised to print their posters in the Polk, in order to keep the posters a reasonable size. The reason for the recommended budget according to Adams, is to encourage students to vote for candidates not based on what campaign materials they provide, but the ideas that they can offer to the school Students will also have a chance to record a video, to be posted on PAnet, explaining why they would like to be president and what some of their ideas are. Unlike last year, the initial group will be reduced to six students in the first round. Last year, the preliminary round of voting narrowed the field to twelve students and the second round to six. Several students are sure of their decision to run this winter term. Faiyad Ahmad ’10 said, “It was a couple of weeks ago when I knew definitively that I wanted to start campaigning and stuff like that. One reason I’m running is just to kind of get myself out there and try to work for the school as much as I can because I have a lot of ideas. I really want to try and work with the community because we have so many people here.” “[I decided I want to run] before I came, I’ll be honest,” said new upper, Scotty Fleming ’10. “Why do I want to run? I want to give back I guess. I want to do something. I’m a new Upper this year, and so this is my way I guess of [saying], ‘I want to be here.’ So I want to do whatever I can.” “I want to do my part to give back to Andover,” began Kyle Franco ’10. “I was sort of on the fence about it, but I’m pretty sure I want to do it. As soon as I got here freshman year and first heard Danny Silk [’07] speak, I was like, ‘Yeah this is something I want to do.’” Thompson-Butler said, “I really liked the school president my Junior year, [Ali Siddiqi ’06]. He just seemed to have a blast doing everything, and he knew everybody. My good friend Trevor and I were just talking about it, and we decided to run, even if we wouldn’t reach the final round, just to have fun and meet people. It wasn’t until right at the end that we decided to run, and it was just on a whim.” “I have thought about running off and on since coming here,” said Lily Shaffer ’10. “But I have had lots of students in the past couple weeks come up to me and tell me that they think I may be a good candidate. And I’ve had one of the influential adults in my life on campus tell me that she thinks I should. That’s been a boost. I feel like the school president is supposed to be that person who’s friendly to everybody and known on campus and makes the lives of all the students a little bit easier through little things.” “I think I’m pretty dead set. I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple months, and I think I pretty much decided I’m ready,” said Will Lindsey ’10. “I think right now I just sort of want to get out and meet as many people as I can and see if we can make a stronger community.” Eric Sirakian ’10 said, “[I’ve been thinking about this] probably since the beginning of this year. I can’t wait to meet so many new people. I love this school, and I want to do something really cool for the school if possible. I’m positive and really looking forward to it.” Thomas Hamel ’10 thought about running for president toward the end of his Lower year. “I want to try to introduce reasonable changes and improvements into student life here at Phillips, be that in the day-to-day academics, athletics, community service [or] extracurricular, be it in the weekend life of the students.” “I’m running because I feel like this is a fantastic opportunity to do something that’s real because what the student body president can do has real impact on the students here,” said Jane Thomas ’10. “I feel like the student body president has the potential to make changes within the school that actually impact the world.” Adams said, “I decided that I wanted to run for school president most likely at the beginning of winter term last year. I had thought about it in the sense that I was Upper Rep, because I had heard there was a curse that if you’re Upper Rep, you can’t become school president, so I was very hesitant about running in the first place, believing that the curse was true… but I was encouraged to take a chance by the kids in my dorm and by my friends.” The “curse” did not stop all three current Upper Representatives – Sirakian, Ahmad and Lindsey – who were all in attendance at the meeting. As an exercise, students were divided into two groups: one group came up with ideas for good campaigning, and the other brainstormed ideas of bad campaigning. Students came up with forgery, unrealistic promises, and disrespectful campaigns, to avoid during their campaigning. After the exercise, Adams stressed the importance of making the effort to meet individuals, as opposed to groups of students, while collecting signatures. “Collecting signatures is a crucial part to getting your votes,” said Adams. Thompson-Butler said, “There was a big group of kids, and that’s really what we wanted. We just wanted to get down a list of names and to encourage kids to come.” “I was impressed by the amount of candidates or the potential candidates that we had in the meeting,” said Adams. “[20]10 is a very spirited class, and I’m sure we’re going to have a strong campaign this year and a strong presidential process because we have so many spirited kids that want to represent the school. Which is never a bad thing in my mind.”
