By Brian Cook
Transcript Correspondent
14 individuals were elected as Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs Residential Representatives for the 2013 calendar year, according to junior Martin Clark, WCSA President.
Also, two Small Living Unit Representatives were elected to serve on WCSA for the 2013 calendar year.
Freshmen making the cut as Residential Representatives include Whitney Weadock, Jerry Lherisson, Katie Nunner, Erica Shah, Hannah Henderson and Lily Pham.
The school’s sophomore Residential Representatives include Mike Serbanoiu, Memme Onwudiwe, Ashkan Ehktera, Alex Lothstein, Lauren Rump and Shane Gorbett.
Juniors who will serve as Residential Representatives this coming year include Sammi Heffron and Caitlin Bailey.
According to the WCSA Constitution, “Residential representatives shall be responsible for representing the general student populous residing in residence halls.”
Only people who live in a residence hall are eligible to run for the position.
One of the Representatives lives in Bashford Hall, one in Smith West, two in Smith East, and three each in Welch, Hayes and Stuyvesant Halls. None live in Thomson Hall.
Additionally, the two SLU representatives elected are juniors Ethan Hovest and Nora Gumanow.
As with residential representatives, one must live in a SLU to be eligible for election. In both instances, the representatives will only serve those who live in their specified domain.
Elections for residential representatives and SLU representatives were held on Feb. 1, which was technically a violation of the WCSA Constitution.
The body’s constitution mandates that residential and SLU representatives be elected in the second week of the spring semester.
Residential and SLU representatives are voting members of WCSA.
While residential representatives do significant work for WCSA and their constituents, their efforts can go unrecognized by students. Many students said they feel that residential representatives are basically irrelevant in their daily lives.
“I don’t know anything they do on campus,” sophomore Hannah Sampson said. She also said that she does not know any of the new representatives personally.
Sophomore Landon Erb also said that he does not have a working relationship with the residential representatives. He said that he was unaware of any of the representatives’ responsibilities.
Clark and junior Timothy O’Keeffe, WCSA vice president, ran together on a platform to increase awareness of WCSA’s role on campus.
Awareness of WCSA was discussed by all three presidential tickets.
Proposed efforts they discussed during campaigning included encouraging members to wear WCSA sweatshirts to events, particularly WCSA-funded ones.
They also discussed setting up office hours and giving non-voting WCSA positions to important student organizations.
In an article published last year by The Transcript, then-sophomore Alex Kerensky, one of the SLU representatives for 2012, said, “I’d like to make WCSA more transparent and less of a mystery. “
Kerensky is now a WCSA Representative for the Class of 2014.
Typically, residential representatives are responsible for dealing with problems exclusively in the residence halls, not SLUs or fraternities.
Both residential and SLU representatives serve terms of one calendar year.