Over the weekend, four major elections took place at Case Western Reserve University. The newly formed Student Executive Council Allocations Committee welcomed its first nine members, and the Residence Hall Association (RHA), Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and Class Officer Collective (COC) held their respective first-year and second-year representative and officer elections.

Caroline Gray, the chair of the Students Presidents Roundtable, thinks the Allocations Committee election was a success. The SPR, along with the Allocations Committee, make up the Student Executive Council (SEC).

The SPR is made up of the presidents of the Undergraduate Student Government, the Undergraduate Diversity Collaborative, the University Media Board, the University Programming Board, the Interfraternity Congress, the Panhellenic Council, the Class Officer Collective and the Residence Hall Association (RHA).

“I was thrilled that we had so many qualified and interested candidates running for the inaugural [Allocations Committee],” said Gray. “There were 16 candidates for nine positions, which was honestly more than I expected, so that was fantastic.”

The Allocations Committee will be deciding on the distribution of the Student Activity Fee, almost $1.8 million in total for the entire school year. After a prior constitutional reform of the SEC, this duty was temporarily performed by the USG Finance Committee in previous years. At the conclusion of another constitutional reform in the spring of 2017, the creation of the Allocation Committee was accelerated to this semester.

Sydney Davis is one of the newly elected Allocations Committee members, with the most votes out of the 16 candidates. Davis previously served on the USG Finance Committee and is looking forward to serving on the Allocations Committee.

“I will definitely start by improving upon the processes developed by last year’s USG Finance Committee,” she said. “I think it’s important to build upon successes and learn from mistakes in order to keep moving forward.”

Davis also has specific goals she wants to achieve throughout the year. She hopes to increase the efficiency of funding distribution so that students can get the most out of the fee they paid.

“I would like to develop a set of guidelines for SEC Reserve Funding that align with the values of SEC as a whole,” said Davis. “This will create standards for reviewing budgets to ensure that the SAF is being utilized effectively [and] that we can provide as many opportunities as possible with the available funds….I believe our campus’ culture is strongly affected by the programming and spirit of our student organizations, so I hope to give these groups as many opportunities as possible by optimizing the funding process.”

One thing that’s special about the Allocations Committee are the regulations for elected members. According to Gray, the newly elected members satisfy these requirements.

“In the SEC constitution,” Gray said, “we have limitations on how many Allocations Committee members can be from any one of our eight Boards [as well as] on how many members can come from the same academic school. I was pleased that there was no need to implement our limitations on committee members based on either organizational representation or on school of study in this set of elections, as it truly allowed for students to handpick each member of this new committee.”

Gray is confident with the newly formed Allocations Committee.

“As the Allocations Committee was only established at the end of the 2017 spring semester,” everyone involved will be navigating new territory,” she said. “That being said, I think our student body has chosen a fantastic group to represent their interests, and they seem passionate and fully capable of the challenge ahead. In the long run, we are always aiming to foster collaboration between our eight member Boards, and I believe that this is a leap in the right direction towards achieving that goal. I am intrigued and excited to witness all that they accomplish this year.”

As of press time, the RHA election results are not public. Alex Zeng, one of the co-commissioners for the RHA election, explained that “some candidates have expressed that they need some time to consider before coming to a decision, so results have not been put out yet.”

Cameron Childers, Executive President of RHA, described this election as “astounding.”

“We had a record 90 candidates and a truly amazing team of co-commissioners that are entirely responsible for the success of this election,” said Childers.