The Tufts Community Union Senate will hold special elections this week to fill vacant positions for the spring semester of the 2024–25 academic year. Voting will begin at noon today and end at the same time on Saturday.
The majority of races this semester will be for class senator seats: five for the Class of 2025, one for the Class of 2026 and two for the Class of 2027. The Asian American community and LGBTQ senator positions are open, and a seat on the TCU Judiciary, which oversees the creation and regulation of student organizations in accordance with the TCU constitution, is also vacant.
“We have an election to make sure that all of our seats are being filled,” TCU President Joel Omolade, a senior, said, “and [so] we have the appropriate amount of senators who are able to represent certain issues on our campus.”
The open community senator seats, representing the Asian American and LGBTQ+ populations at Tufts, can pave the way for changes that benefit marginalized groups at the university level, Election Commission Treasurer Luca O’Neil, a junior, said. In the last year, for instance, Community Senator Iman Boulouah helped establish the first physical space for those of Southwest Asian and North African descent at Tufts in West Hall.
“I think it’s great that we have representation in the Senate,” O’Neil said. “Even looking at the political climate in our current United States, we are seeing these attacks on these communities, and I think part of the way that we resist that … is to start local and that even starts at the university level.”
Ensuring fair and democratic elections is the central role of the Election Commission, which has been tasked to organize this week’s vote. According to junior Meirav Solomon, ECOM public relations chair, their primary goal this semester is to educate Tufts students about the TCU electoral process.
“I think that it should be incredibly clear. I think that the average Tufts student should be able to tell other people, ‘Hey, this is what we do at our school. This is how it’s run,’” Solomon said.
Solomon and other ECOM members have instituted a number of measures to increase transparency for candidates and voters following the TCU presidential election controversy last spring. Over the summer, ECOM revised many of its internal bylaws to clarify TCU documents outlining election procedures.
“We feel that we have successfully filled those gaps and closed those loopholes in a way that has made this past [year’s] elections … much more transparent,” Solomon said.
ECOM also made an effort to increase its outreach efforts through its output on social media and a general interest meeting for potential candidates, which they hosted in late January.
The overarching goal, Solomon said, is to clear up misunderstandings before problems occur.
“Instead of having to educate TCU senators after they’ve run, we can educate them before,” she said. “That way, they’re able to spread that education to the body politic as well but also just know it within themselves and then be able to answer questions.”
Special elections are not new for returning Tufts students. However, O’Neil said there are more open seats for the senior class than is typical. O’Neil explained that upperclassmen are less inclined to serve a single semester at the end of their college career.
Omolade said he appreciates when seniors join the Senate because it shows their genuine interest.
“It’s not about the longevity or the trajectory of the Senate, it’s just [that] they have this idea or passion they want to explore in their last semester of college,” Omolade said.
Omolade, nearing the end of his time at Tufts, is optimistic about what TCU can accomplish in his final semester as its president.
“I'm excited to see what the end of the year holds for me and the Senate,” he said, “because I think that we are in a really strong spot and only in a stronger spot as the year continues.”
