Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senators Chas Morrison and Brandon Rattiner have begun laying the foundations for their potential campaigns for the TCU presidency for the 2009-2010 academic year, though the two senators cannot yet officially announce their candidacies.
Rattiner, a junior, and Morrison, a sophomore, are now taking the preliminary steps typical of presidential campaigns. The two have begun talking to active members of the Tufts community, gleaning student feedback on how Tufts can be improved and consolidating ideas on what students are looking for in a TCU president.
The official presidential election process begins after TCU general elections, which will take place next Wednesday. Candidates come from the Senate body -- which will include rising sophomores, juniors and seniors -- and they must be internally nominated at a special meeting on April 12.
During the four days in between those two events, senators are allowed to actively lobby other senators to support their nominations, although both Morrison and Rattiner have begun approaching other members of the student government for informal conversations.
After a separate April 13 meeting with the TCU Elections Commission (ECOM), senators can openly campaign for president. The student body-wide election will occur this year on April 22.
Both Rattiner and Morrison, who are actively involved in Senate and in a variety of student activities, have jumped headfirst into the process.
Rattiner serves as co-chair of the Senate's Education Committee and is an active member of Tufts Mountain Club, Tufts Hillel and the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Morrison chairs the Senate's Administration and Policy Committee, serves as the president of the Delta Tau Delta (DTD) colony, and has been heavily involved with the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) and the New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP) -- two Institute for Global Leadership groups. He co-founded the Tufts Roundtable, an on-campus political magazine, last semester.
The senators' attention has been focused on those holding leadership positions in student groups. ECOM regulations specify that candidates cannot speak directly to the Daily prior to nomination, but review of their discussions with Tufts students offers insight into preliminary campaign strategies.
In an informal meeting, Morrison talked with junior Jenn Bollenbacher, a Tisch Scholar and member of the Tufts Democrats, about her experiences abroad and her thoughts for improving the Tufts campus.
"He just wanted to sit down and talk to me," she said. "He loves this school so much and I think he is genuinely concerned about everyone else loving this school as well."
Rattiner sat down with fellow Senator Lauren Levine, who co-chairs the Senate's Special Projects Committee, to discuss preliminary campaign ideas and strategies.
"We mainly just discussed a lot of his ideas and the type of leader that he is," said Levine, a sophomore who is a member of the Chi Omega sorority and is actively involved with Tufts Hillel. "I thought that [the ideas] really logically followed a lot of projects and ideas that Brandon has been pushing the last two years I've been on Senate with him."
According to Levine, Rattiner's candidacy was not unexpected.
"I was not surprised," she said. "Brandon has shown to be one of the real leaders of the Senate, especially as the co-chair of the Education Committee this year; his leadership has really stood out against a lot of other committee chairs."
Morrison reached out to Brian Agler, a member of the Tufts Democrats and of the fencing team.
"He has a lot of good ideas and he just wants to get student feedback," Agler, a sophomore, said. "At this point, there is no true campaign yet. He's still talking to people, trying to figure out what he wants to do."
Agler praised Morrison. "He's very smart, very articulate and very pragmatic ... At the end of the day, we need someone who can actually get things done," he said.
Sophomore Katy Simon, senator and member of Building Understanding through International Learning and Development (BUILD), has been working closely with Rattiner.
"I really believe in Brandon -- I have complete confidence in his capabilities," Simon said. "We're not allowed to do any actual campaigning so far. It's mostly been just a planning process."
She said that the campaign's tentative slogan is "A voice for here and now."
Senior Dan Hartman, a former president of Tufts Republicans, has been intimately involved with Morrison's efforts.
"[Morrison has] been reaching out to as many students as possible and trying to get their ideas. He wants to bring Tufts together," Hartman added.
He lauded Morrison's work on residential life.
"Chas has actually done a lot of great work in terms of improving residential life at Tufts; Metcalf and West's common rooms have been totally revamped," Hartman said.
Immediate past TCU President Neil DiBiase, who currently serves as the TCU Senate's trustee representative for university advancement, praised both Rattiner and Morrison. He added that he will remain uncommitted to either candidate until he receives more information from the campaigns.
Meanwhile, ECOM Chair Adam Weldai said he has heard that two other students -- who are not currently senators -- may run for president if they are elected to Senate next week.
"There is talk amongst the student body that there are people that are considering running for president if in fact they are elected to Senate," he said.
Agler, who spoke with Morrison, said the two senators currently exploring running for Senate are strong potential candidates.
"From what I understand, it's going to be a really great campaign, just because they're really smart guys and really committed guys," he said.
