New Senators Have Big Plans
BY ADRIAN LEUNG

Students elected five new student senators this week. Some arrive with agendas. Others are eager to start learning the intricacies of Senate. The new senators are College juniors Ni’ja Whitson and Alexander Zorach, first-years Behrad Mahdi and Daniel B. Rubin, and Conservatory junior Joseph Greaves. Rubin said his motivations for becoming a senator stem from his concerns with over-enrollment, credit limitations and registration. “Class size is a major issue. You simply cannot have the same experience or learn the same way in a group of 50 or 80 than with a class of 20 or 30. It just detracts from our academic experience. Right now, there aren’t enough classes for the number of students in many academic areas. One has to change, either more classes or fewer students.” 
Similar to other students on campus, Rubin also expressed dislike for the registration system. “There’s a lot of red tape students have to deal with, especially with registration. I think our registration is absolutely inane to both students and faculty, like the fact that faculty can’t change class sizes once they’ve declared them at the beginning of the semester, and that they add more during add/drop. Just the entire registration process is utterly inane.”
Concerning credit limitations, Rubin proposed an alternate possibility of class limitations. “People in my position, who need to take math classes and science classes that have labs, you’re mostly limited to taking four courses a semester. I think it’d be a lot more sensible to have a five class limit, rather than a 16 credit limit.”
Zorach said he plans to increase the functionality of Senate, focusing around the web page. “I intend to update the web page and help it become a place where students can see exactly what the senate is doing, and can give us feedback on how they feel about it. I want Senate’s behavior to come to actually reflect the wishes of the student body.”
Mahdi said he hopes to first acquaint himself with Senate and its process. “The thing that I am most interested in doing is understanding how Student Senate does what it does, and trying to see if it is effective in accomplishing its goals,” he said.
Whitson spoke of the groups she will represent as a senator. “I plan to work for the Black community and the POC community,” she said.
Although their concerns were different, some senators did share a common goal of increasing Senate’s accessibility.
Rubin related a tale of the difficulties he found when attempting to allocate a committee seat last semester. “The reason I ran for Student Senate is that first semester, I was interested in volunteering in one of the student committees, for SFC, and the advising committee, both of which were advertising for spots. [A senator] said that I was a freshman, and that they usually don’t take applications from freshmen seriously. student senate gave me the run around, and I think that in the past, my impression is that people have not gotten good responses from trying to approach them, which is why people tend to not approach them or take them seriously now. That should change.”
Zorach justified his concern with accessibility with statistics from the recent elections. “Currently, Senate does not represent the student body in any meaningful way. In the last election, only about one out of seven students voted — this turnout is worse than that of our country! This is neither the fault of the senators, nor of the students. Students here are not apathetic; they just don’t have time to get involved in the senate given the current setup. The senate is currently accessible, but not in the manner students need. Most students can’t and won’t take the time to stop by office hours or become directly involved in the senate — but they will be willing to take a minute to voice their opinion via a web form or e-mail.”
Mahdi said he was gratified that students elected him. He said a senate position was directly related to his motivations for attending Oberlin College. “I came to Oberlin because of all the places I applied, I knew that there were more opportunities for me to become active in meaningful extra-curricular activities such as sports, music or politics. My Senate nomination and election is an outgrowth of my interest in being intimately involved with the College at different levels. I hope I will serve both the students and the college well,” he said.
Graves, too busy to answer questions, said he intends to write a letter to the editors of the Review next week addressing his motivations for becoming a Senator and his senatorial goals.
Some students said they hope for more interaction between students and their Senate. Sophomore Laura Szabo-Kubitz said, “I’d like for Senate to involve other students more actively. They should make students more integral. I don’t know who’s on Senate or what they do. Maybe it’s not publicized enough. This could be a reflection on me not paying attention, but it’d be nice to be able to have a dialogue with them.”