At their last meeting of the semester, the Honor Committee reflected on the positive publicity for Honor that resulted from their co-sponsorship with the Lighting of the Lawn Committee. The Committee also discussed upcoming events for students during finals weeks as well as preparation for the University elections in February, in hopes of improving election turnout.
Thomas Ackleson, Committee chair and fourth-year Engineering student, said that the Honor and LOTL co-sponsorship enhanced publicity for Honor amongst the University community. Specifically, he said that the light-up wristbands — which Honor funded through the $10,000 co-sponsorship — advertised how Honor is a resource on Grounds, ready to support students throughout the year.
“We had the [Honor Committee logo] on the wristbands, which was great [for] publicity, but [I also think] people understood the Honor Committee was helping to support the event and helping to bring everyone together,” Ackleson said.
Penelope Molitz, vice chair for the undergraduate community and fourth-year Education student, said that she thinks it would be beneficial to further enhance the Honor Committee's relationship with the LOTL Committee — possibly by having someone from Honor on the LOTL Committee in the future.
The Committee also discussed plans to improve election turnout and contestation this spring in University-wide elections for organizations such as the Honor Committee and the University Judiciary Committee. These elections are run each semester by the University Board of Elections, who create the election calendar and maintain the ballot on the University’s online voting system.
Voter turnout in last spring’s University-wide elections was estimated to be 22.5 percent of the student body. Honor elections specifically saw a turnout of 21.98 percent. In the elections for school-specific Honor representatives — the Continuing and Professional Studies representative, Medicine representative, Batten representative, Engineering representative, Commerce representative, College representative, School of Law representative and Data Science representative — five of eight candidates were uncontested.
Seamus Oliver, chair of the policies and procedures subcommittee and fourth-year College student, said that a major contributor to poor voter turnout is uncontested elections.
“I think one of the things we should most push for that we missed out on in the past is starting early and ensuring … we have competitive elections,” Oliver said. “You can see year over year in the UBE statistics that one of the surest things to have turnout drop to basically nothing is to have a race be uncontested.”
Gabby Bray, School of Law representative and Law student, said that she believes a big contributor to poor election turnout is students not fully understanding the impacts these elections have on student life. Bray said that one potential remedy could be focusing on educating students about why they should care and participate in University elections.
Following Bray’s statement, Molitz proposed encouraging more student organizations in cosponsorships with Honor to become Endorsing Organizations for the upcoming election. She said that this allowed these organizations to better get to know all of the candidates and become more familiar with the Committee as a whole, hopefully leading to more future collaboration between the organizations and Honor.
The UBE recognizes a few Endorsing Organizations each election, who have the opportunity to campaign on behalf of candidates and participate in public debates and forums.
Continuing the discussion from previous meetings about finals week events, Ackleson noted that he would be sending out an email to students with details of the events the Committee has been planning for students. These events include goody bags for Architecture students distributed on Wednesday, a coffee tab at Grit Coffee for College students Thursday, pie and hot chocolate for Engineering students Friday and a coffee tab at Higher Grounds for Medical School students Monday among others listed in an email sent by Ackleson early this week to students.
The Committee will be hosting its next meeting Jan. 18 at 7 p.m. which can be attended in-person in Newcomb Hall or via Zoom. The Zoom links for Honor meetings are posted on their website.
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