Since Oct. 2006, 115 monetary pledges to the College have been revoked, costing the College $16,013,616.42, according to information released yesterday by University Relations.

p. The College released the information in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Flat Hat.

p. The list includes the $12 million pledge revoked by James McGlothlin ’62 in February of 2007. McGlothlin said that he rescinded the donation to protest former College President Gene Nichol’s removal of the cross from the Wren Chapel in Oct. 2006. The list also included a pulled $1.8 million pledge and a $2 million pledge. The smallest revoked donation was $1.42.

p. According to College spokesperson Brian Whitson, the revoked donations were not necessarily in response to College policy.
“This is a list of commitments revoked since October 2006, not a list that is specific to any decision or issue at the College,” Whitson said.
Vice President for Development Sean Pieri could not be reached for comment.

p. Look for more information in upcoming editions of The Flat Hat or online at flathatnews.com.

__Students make up 14 percent of registered voters__

“Absolutely. I mean, absolutely.”

p. That was the reply from former Student Assembly Senate Chair Matt Beato ’09 when asked if he thinks he can get elected to the Williamsburg City Council. Beato announced his candidacy over spring break and resigned from his position in the SA to focus on his campaign; Sen. Walter McClean ’09 was elected Tuesday to serve as chair in the interim until the SA elections.

p. “I believe the City Council needs to have someone … who understands the issues of young people,” he said. “I don’t think a government is effective if it has citizens from only one area of the community.”

p. **A Viable Student Candidate**
Beato’s run for City Council marks the first time a student has run for the position since all students at the College have been allowed to register to vote. David Sievers ’07 ran for the position two years ago and lost by 154 votes. Today, various voter drives on campus have registered over 1,000 students, making College students approximately 14 percent of registered voters. According to SA President Zach Pilchen ’09, a new voter drive expects to register another 700 students in the coming weeks. If successful, students will make up approximately 22 percent of registered voters.

p. “Anyone who is registered to vote in the city of Williamsburg has the right to run for political office,” Williamsburg Mayor Jeanne Zeidler said. “I have never been opposed to a student running for City Council.”

p. Although Pilchen is happy to see astudent run for office, he warned that students should be careful when voting.

p. “I think a lot of people in Williamsburg would be pretty mistaken to believe that students at the College are just going to blindly vote for any student who happens to be running for student council,” he said.

p. Zeidler objected to the distinction between students and Williamsburg residents.

p. “A member of City Council should be responsive to all constituencies,” she said.

p. Beato says he feels he has the concerns of all Williamsburg in mind.

p. “I have an obligation to the people in the community — off campus and on campus, students and non-students, wealthy businessmen and low-income workers — to try and affect change in the city,” he said.

p. Pilchen will not play a role in the campaign.

p. “I don’t think it’s appropriate at all for someone in my position to be active in a campaign,” Pilchen said. “My focus has always been on registering students to vote and, through doing that, leveraging their political power in the city of Williamsburg.”

p. Beato agreed.

p. “I don’t want there to be any perception of there being any sort of illicit intermingling or anything like that,” he said.

p. In an e-mail to the senate, Beato added that he will ask many student representatives to assist in his campaign, although not in an official capacity.

p. “Many of you are my closest friends and I will ask you to help me in that regard,” he said. “But I will not ask you to do anything in your official position for me.”

p. SA Vice President Valerie Hopkins ’09 sent an e-mail to the senate lamenting Beato’s resignation.

p. “I think we can all agree that our beloved Chairman’s impending resignation is a bittersweet one,” she said. “It is indubitably a dark day for the Senate, but losing him for the coming four weeks is a burden we all must shoulder collectively to further our quest for One Williamsburg.”

p. **Beato On the Issues**
Beato’s democratic experience in Williamsburg began when he visited the College. After reading an article in The Flat Hat about the SA, Beato was hooked.

p. “I thought that, were I to go to William and Mary, I might be a member [of the SA], even if I couldn’t get elected,” he wrote in the e-mail to the SA. “The fact that I wound up chairing that body is beyond my wildest dreams.”

p. Beato attended both student government meetings and meetings for the City Council, Neighborhood Council and Planning Commission. During the summer of 2006, Beato had his first run-in with what is now one of his campaign issues: the “three-person” rule that prohibits more than three unrelated people from living in a Williamsburg house together.

p. “I moved into an off-campus apartment with four other people. As we all knew, this could cause problems because of city ordinances, and it eventually did, leaving me with no place to live,” he said. “I had to sleep in the SA office in the Campus Center.” Eventually, James Evans ’07 let him sleep at the Alpha Epsilon Pi lodge.

p. Other issues for Beato include affordable housing for low-income families, businesses leaving the city for James City and York counties and accessibility of the city government to students. Another is the recent Harrison Avenue house the Williamsburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority bought and transformed from a rental.

Valerie Hopkins ’09 and Zach Pilchen ’09 are running on experience.

p. It would be a stretch to call it a campaign for the status quo, as their platform and record indicates panache for shaking things up. However, Pilchen and Hopkins’ current roles as president and vice president, respectively, prevent them from campaigning as the candidates of change.

p. As incumbents, the Hopkins/Pilchen ticket focuses on building upon the progress made over the last year.

p. Their campaign website, ValerieandZach.com, focuses equally on their accomplishments over the past year, their current projects with the Student Assembly and their plans for the future.

p. “We’re already working … so many hours a week,” Hopkins said, describing the efforts of her and Pilchen’s current cabinet.
“We’re now at a place where we can see the next horizon,” Pilchen said.

p. The developments on campus and in Williamsburg over the last year have been substantial. Voter registration, the numerous issues with the Board of Visitors and the controversy surrounding the resignation of former College President Gene Nichol have all presented serious challenges to the incumbents, and their responses to these challenges have been lauded by many student leaders.

p. Many of their stances are a continuation of the issues which they have consistently advocated over the course of their term.
Opposition to the three-person rule, expansion of SA services to p. the student body, and greater communication between the campus and the BOV are important planks on their platform.
Those familiar with the workings of the SA have said that Hopkins and Pilchen have not consistently faced opposition to their past and current platforms.

p. “They did a very good job,” editor of the conservative student newspaper The Virginia Informer and SA Sen. Joe Luppino-Esposito ’08 said. “They made great strides in areas they focused on.” He added that they advanced voter registration, and that Matt Beato’s ’09 run for City Council proves testifies to their efforts.

p. A striking feature of their campaign website is its size; it provides a laundry list of 37 goals and accomplishments. The candidates described their platform as a collection of big ideas, with highly specific goals devised to support these big ideas. When asked to compare their plans for the College with those of their opponents, they used their energy efficiency plan as an example of their stratified platform.

p. “[Adam Rosen and Emily Nuñez] have interesting ideas,” Pilchen said. “But we’re looking at a larger campaign toward energy efficiency. Everything we do has a big goal with underlying medium and smaller goals.”

p. According to the candidates, the primary focus of their campaign is the empowerment of individual students with regard to the SA, city and state government and the BOV. Hopkins added that by composing a diverse cabinet and staff, they have given voice to many elements of the student population that had previously not been heard in the SA.

p. “We surround ourselves with people from various groups,” Pilchen said.

p. Their experience, as well as the strength and diversity of their cabinet, has given them a “more nuanced and expansive view on the needs of the College,” Hopkins said. “We like hearing people, getting opinions.”

p. Neither Hopkins nor Pilchen would characterize their candidacy as “more of the same,” and their stances indicate as much. Perhaps that is why, when asked for a campaign slogan, they did not have one. Instead it seems that although these candidates believe they have accomplished a lot, but that more could be done.

This March, the Student Assembly elections will welcome two challengers, Adam Rosen ’09 and Emily Nuñez ’09, into the political scene for the office of president and vice president.

p. Rosen, a native of Raleigh, N.C., is a government and music double major at the College who transferred from Johns Hopkins University.

p. Nuñez, from Richmond, is an American studies and art history double major at the College who transferred from the University of Mary Washington last spring. After graduation, Nuñez plans to go to law school or work in public policy.

p. Rosen said that the idea to run for office came from his friends. “I was approached from a very good friend of mine, and I just felt like the time was right,” Rosen said.

p. Rosen and Nuñez said they feel strongly about the issue of SA transparency. Rosen cited the current SA’s failure to make legislation and daily proceedings available to the immediate public. The embrace of transparency as an issue may prove a strength to the candidates, in light of the protests regarding Board of Visitor transparency following the resignation of former College President Gene Nichol.

p. “At the moment, the SA has failed to even keep their website up to date. The last time legislation was updated was the closing session of last year,” Rosen said. “We think that it’s important that the SA [be] held completely accountable and fully disclose everything.”

p. Rosen and Nuñez described an SA transparency program in which daily video feed and proceedings would be recorded and put on YouTube and podcasted for iTunes. They also advocated hiring a paid cabinet member whose role would be that of webmaster for the Student Information Network website.

p. Nuñez also wants to start weekly meetings at the Daily Grind between the president and vice president with students to forge greater relations between the student body and the SA.

p. Both also spoke about sexual assault prevention and ways to improve the existing system for freshman orientation speeches. Whereas incumbents Valerie Hopkins and Zack Pilchen promoted co-ed discussion groups, Rosen and Nuñez instead preferred single gender discussions.

p. “Every study that’s ever been conducted says that single gender groups are the way to go and that you have to be extremely cautious with co-ed discussion groups because it can be dangerous,” Rosen said.

p. In addition, the candidates called for a meal plan reform that would extend business hours of dining services around campus, improving the environmental policies of the campus and working with the governor’s office for a voice on the BOV.

p. As for recent events, Rosen and Nuñez said that the College needed to move on.

p. “Remember what we’ve done in the past and be proud of that and move forward,” Rosen said. “If we continue to focus on what happened to Nichol, being angry at the BOV, destroying our campus with graffiti, those are the chains that restrain us from moving forward.”

p. Nuñez agreed with Rosen, stating that the College should not linger on the past.

p. “Nichol was a good man, but we do need to move on,” Nuñez added. Moreover, the candidates said that Pilchen and Hopkins had not succeeded with their agenda.

p. “The president and vice president have followed through with less than 10 percent of their promises,” Rosen said. “Emily and I, we don’t have 35 issues, we just put out six, and I think we’re going to keep six .… While we don’t promise that we can get everything done that we’d like to, we promise to work on everything we’d like to get done.”

p. The Rosen/Nuñez ticket offers a change of pace for the SA, capitalizing on the appeal of fresh faces and ideas. In the end, both candidates emphasized the importance of the student body in the political process.

p. “Your ideas, your voice, a campus united. That’s what’s important for us,” Rosen said. “If we’re elected, that’s what’s going to be our mission.”