On Sept. 15, freshmen students voted for First-Year Class Council (FYCC) members for Notre Dame’s student government. Each residence hall elects one representative to the body. Twenty out of 32 halls had multiple candidates running for the position.
Junior Elijah Jones, judicial council president and facilitator of the freshman council elections, commented over email on an uptick in engagement with student government.
“This year, the Class of 2029 had an increased interest in getting involved in the Student Union. Over 100 first-year students showed up to the First-Year Showcase. The capacity of the room was 105 people, and there was an overflow of people standing in the aisles and in the back of the room. Additionally, 73 students requested a petition form to run for First-Year Class Council,” Jones wrote.
As an organization, FYCC’s goal is to bring students together from each class and residence hall through a variety of different activities.
“This is done through programming and event planning, with class merch and the class formal being two major things the First-Year Class Council is in charge of,” Jones wrote.
The FYCC representative for Knott Hall last year, sophomore Philip Jepko, was involved in FYCC’s social committee where he helped organize many of these projects.
“I planned Candy Gram sales, First-Year Formal, End of Year Barbecue, Crumbl and Coloring, and more. Going in, I had many more ideas of events we could do, like a fall or winter-themed event; however, we only had a limited time and budget, so it was nearly impossible to implement each and every representative's ideas,” Jepko wrote in an email to The Observer.
Breen-Phillips Hall’s newly elected representative, freshman Sissy Page, said she ran in order to promote inter-dorm activities.
“I hope to plan a lot of events that bring together the different dorms, especially the dorms that aren’t brother-sister dorms,” Page said.
This was also one of Jepko’s goals last year, which he worked toward through the collaboration of the different FYCC committees, including the athletics, social services, finance and communications committees. This year’s class council will likely make use of similar delegations.
Page ran unopposed, as she was the only candidate from Breen-Phillips Hall able to receive enough petitions to run. Some elections, however, were much more competitive. In Welsh Family Hall, for example, their first election did not declare a clear winner, so they held a run-off election last Thursday.
“It was nerve wracking because the night after the first election I was told I won, but then the next morning they came back and said they calculated the results wrong. I had to plan for the run-off election and do a little more campaigning,” freshman Grace Rochelle, Welsh Family Hall’s FYCC representative, said.
To campaign, Rochelle printed posters and verbally encouraged students in her residence hall to vote for her.
“I was class president my junior and senior year of high school. I’m very much into school spirit and I enjoy getting kids involved. I thought the First-Year Class Council would be a great way to get involved in student government,” Rochelle stated.
With her position, Rochelle hopes to prioritize fundraising and unity of the residence halls.
“Because of our strong communication, fellow FYCC reps became a very tight-knit community, and I consider many of them very close friends today, which demonstrates the strong collaborative environment we maintained,” Jepko wrote.
The First-Year Class Council has its first meeting this Tuesday.
