If he wins tomorrow's Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidential election, Senator Logan Cotton, a junior, plans to bring change to the Senate for the benefit of the Tufts community, he said.
Cotton served as a senator his sophomore year and was reelected to the Senate on April 11 after resigning the position while abroad. He is heavily involved in campus organizations including his fraternity, Theta Delta Chi (123), the Africana studies working group, Pan?African Alliance and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center, where he interned during his sophomore year. His platform focuses on culture shifts both on campus and within the Senate, he said.
"I think that I have the experiences inside of Senate and outside of Senate to bring together coalitions of people and begin to enact a paradigm shift with respect to how Senate operates ... in conjunction with the Tufts community," Cotton said.
After keeping in touch with current senators while spending last semester abroad with Tufts in Madrid, Cotton attended a Senate meeting this semester and was disappointed to see many of the same problems he experienced while on the Senate, he said.
"Senators would say things like, 'Well, you know, I don't know if this is going to make the administration feel very good,'" he said. "You shouldn't be representing the administration to students, you should be representing students to the administration."
A former Allocations Board and Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs Committee chair, Cotton was frustrated that group leaders do not feel satisfied or connected with the Senate.
"There was just a disconnect," Cotton said. "There wasn't an understanding of what mattered to groups, what made sense to cut."
Cotton is also concerned with students' ability to have their voices heard by the Senate, citing some senators' "hostile" responses to senior Jimmy Zuniga's complaint about the Friends of Israel advertisement in The Tufts Daily at the meeting he attended.
"I thought that was a real problem with the culture on Senate," Cotton said. "It's problematic that people don't feel they're being listened to."
"The $57,000 that they pay to be here is reason enough for them to always feel as if Tufts is working for them," he added.
Ellie Caple, a junior who is Cotton's campaign manager, said Cotton's experience as both a senator and a group leader prepared him to make changes within the Senate.
"All of his platforms are really important in terms of reforming Senate and making it ... a more active body," she said. "I think it's unreasonable to expect something different of Senate when we're electing the same senators over and over again."
Cotton agreed that his experiences with diverse campus organizations informed his platform and inspired confidence in his ability to lead.
"I think [changing the Senate culture] is going to require a very different vision and attitude and skill set," he said. "I have a strong, lived Tufts experience, and it's robust, and I think that the robustness is where Wyatt and I differ."
Caple listed Cotton's ability to engage with the student body as a valuable asset in this race.
"Logan is a person who actively goes out and listens to people, even when he's not campaigning for president," she said.
Cotton's platform, beyond reforming the Senate culture, focuses on issues of general discrimination on the Hill.
"I think that we need to reopen the conversation about an open and accessible campus," he said. "I think that needs to be done through a series of forums, perhaps petitions, even demonstrations if necessary."
During his time on the Senate, Cotton worked with Fraternity and Sorority Affairs and the LGBT Center to create a mandatory talk about safe spaces for fraternity pledges during new member education. Although he said he was not entirely satisfied with the project's completion, he hopes to bring his experience with this and other coordinated events, such as a consent workshop for 123 with Tufts Voices for Choice, to the presidency next year.
Caple also sees Cotton's experience with the Africana studies working group as an asset.
"He's been doing a lot of great work and can bring all that experience to Senate," she said.
Cotton's other goals include changing alcohol policy so those who call for medical assistance for another student receive amnesty for alcohol?related infractions, moving the Cage Rage Concert to the end of fall semester and encouraging student entrepreneurs by creating a "hack lab" in Davis Square where they can collaborate.
The idea of a "hack lab" came from discussions with Tufts students who worked to create Navlit - a private social network that Cotton's team is currently using as beta testers to plan his campaign - at spaces such as Harvard's innovation lab, he said.
"It's kind of cool because Navlit's growing with the campaign," Cotton said. "We need to tap into that spirit."
Cotton disagreed with his opponent, TCU Vice President Wyatt Cadley, a junior, that a spontaneous day off during the semester - what Cadley is calling Jumbo Day - would be an effective spirit booster.
"I don't think that event would be especially successful," Cotton said. "If [the Naked Quad Run] is truly not coming back, the way to fix it is not to force or create something for that weekend."
Beyond his own staff, Cotton praised Cadley for keeping this year's presidential race civil and congenial, saying that the two often exchange Facebook messages and text each other.
"I really like this campaign because I think Wyatt and I respect each other a lot, and I respect the work he's done inside of Senate, and I think he respects the work I've done inside of Senate and outside of it also. We get along well," Cotton said. "I really appreciate that sort of tenor."
Cotton has taken the role of the outsider in this race, as reflected by his campaign staff, which has few senators but that he describes as an "amazing mixture."
"My campaign staff is unorthodox," he said. "It's people who are really doing stuff in these clubs and communities, and are really affected by Senate through budgeting, through funding, but also who need to be affected by Senate in ways that are much less sterile than just their budgets."
Cotton's staff has used a variety of methods to publicize his name, including proliferating a stylized image of him created on the website of the musician Pharrell and debuting a Logan?themed cookie sold by John "The Cookie Guy" Piermarini today.
Caple, who met Cotton through the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship Colloquium (EPIIC), said that she agreed to help him with his campaign because of the character he displayed during the course. Although his ideas did not always match those of his classmates, Cotton stuck to his views and explained his points without overreacting.
"Even at his worst, Logan is always curious, he's always passionate," Caple said. "He's a real person ... He doesn't have to put on any airs to get votes."
