History of the PresidencyANDOVER STUDENT BODY PRESIDENTS

BY RACE AND GENDER

1973

African-American/African 10%

South Asian/Indian American 10%

Asian-American/Asian 7.5%

Caucasian 72.5%

Race of School President (1973-2012)

Female 20.1%

Male 79.9%

Gender of Candidate Pool (1992-2012)

Male 66.7%

Female 33.3%

Gender of Semi-�nal Candidate Pool When Female

Student Won

Female 10%

Male 90%

Gender of School President (1973-2012)

Other 4.0%

African-American/African 13.4%

South Asian/Indian American 3.4%

Asian-American/Asian 10.1%

Caucasian 69.1%

Race of Candidate Pool (1992-2012)

1975

1977

1981

1992

2005

20082009

2010

2013

2002

FirstSchool President

Neil Migdol ’74Chosen by the 6 Cluster Presidents

Student BodyPopularly Elects

1 of 6 Cluster Presidentsto be School President

First AsianSchool President

Julian Chang ’78

1975200 Signatures Now Required

to run for School President

Semi-�nal Round now includes top 3 candidates

First BlackSchool President

Todd Fletcher ’86

First FemaleSchool President

Hadley Soutter ’82

70%of males of females

40%Believe men and women

are treated equally at Andoveraccording to a 1992 poll, the phillipian

Requirement for Equal Numberof Male & Female Leaders

rejected by cluster councils

Vice President Positioncreated by student council

for 2nd place candidate

First IndianSchool President

Ali Siddiqi ’06

Executive Secretary Positioncreated by student council

for 3rd place candidate

Join Student Council

Females Seek Merit-based Leadership,

according to a study by Jane Fried, AssistantMales Seek Election-based Leadership

Head for Enrollment, Research & Planning

Student Coucil RemodelsAndover Student Government

Co-Presidential model instated, Vice President &Executive Secretary positions eliminated, semi-final

round includes two candidate-pairs

1985

4 Female Students AttendSchool President interest meeting

Lower Girls Encouraged to

at meeting held by Alana Rush, Associate Dean ofCommunity Service & Malin Adams ’09, School President

of the 25-30 students in attendance

A8 NEWS T h e P h i l l i p i a n March 8, 2013

The establishment of a School President position in 1973 followed a recom-mendation from the Ando-ver’s Advisory Committee (AdCom), made up of both students and faculty. Ad-Com suggested the School President be elected by the six Cluster Presidents from the Cluster Presidents them-selves. The School President, according to the 1973 Philli-pian article, would serve pri-marily as an ex-officio mem-ber of AdCom and partake in administrative tasks.

Prior to this date, the six Cluster Presidents were responsible for much of the day-to-day executive tasks, so the School President was intended to bridge the gap between the students’ “ex-ecutive” body—the Cluster Council—and faculty.

As time went on, how-ever, it became clear that the student body wanted to vote their School President di-rectly. Based on a question-naire to the students about the election process, Don Rimsky ’75, School Presi-dent, decided to allow the entire student body to vote for a School President out of the pool of six Cluster Presi-dents, according to a 1975 Phillipian article.

The same year, the Com-mittee of Residential Life (CRL), consisting only of faculty and administrators, replaced AdCom. While CRL was only an advising body with few legislative powers, students still felt a lack of representation in school decision-making, as editorialized by The Phillip-ian.

In response, CRL sug-gested in 1979 to allow Clus-ter Presidents to vote at fac-ulty meetings. This proposal was not passed.

In 1981, Hadley Soutter ’82 was elected the first fe-male School President. She wrote in an e-mail to The Phillipian, “It was a healthy representation of capable, spirited, and giving young women robustly involved in a range of leadership roles we felt meaningfully con-nected to, from nurturing newcomers, to working out policy, to offering critiques of campus life.”

In 1988, after debate over the lack of student voice in decision-making, the faculty voted to implement a School Congress, which included the entire faculty, Student Council and representatives from the minority groups: Afro-Latino-American So-ciety, Asian Society, Jewish Student Union and Women’s Forum.

The student members had the same opportunity to speak and vote as teach-ers on student-related issues only. Some faculty members questioned the inclusion of Women’s Forum’s participa-tion in the Congress, as they composed 48 percent of the student body and had equal representation in Student Council, according to a May 6 article.

The same May 6, 1988 ar-ticle also detailed an incident in which a female teacher or-ganized a meeting of select-ed female faculty members, suggesting that the women vote only for females in the upcoming election for Ad-Com, which had been rein-stated. When approached, she justified the meeting by stating that men have been doing the same thing for years.

In 1991, to alleviate con-cerns about ballot stuffing in preliminary rounds, Stu-dent Council did not ratify proposals to set a quorum, which would invalidate the presidential election if a minimum level of voter at-tendance was not fulfilled.

In 1992, however, The Phillipian editorialized about lack of student enthusiasm for the Student Council elec-tions. The editorial cited the previous Spring’s elections, when make-believe candi-date “Chewbacca” received a substantial number of stu-dent votes, as evidence that the students “deemed the three candidates incapable of exceptional representation.”

That same year, gender-related debates ensued after Rebekah Lewis ’92 criticized lack of females on The Phil-lipian and WPAA boards in a Letter to the Edi-tor on March 6. WPAA respond-ed that “the deci-sion process was not a sexist one. The problem... lies more

deeply embedded in our community.” In an article titled “Female Apathy vs. Male Oppression” on March 10, John Udell ’92 and Colm Gallagher ’92 asserted that males held more board posi-tions than females because of the “‘dominant male idea” in the society, compelling fe-males to “subservient roles.”

A poll of the student body in the same 1992 issue of The Phillipian showed that 70 percent of males surveyed believed men and women are treated equally on cam-pus, compared with only 46 percent of female students surveyed.

In 2001, faculty and Stu-dents discussed lack of fe-males in leadership across campus according to Philli-pian article on February 27, titled: “Twenty-Six Years Af-ter Merger, Gender Relations Still Tenuous.” In response, the 2001 Student Council “pushed the idea of splitting the class representative roles so that there was one male and one female,” said Joe Maliekel ’01, former School President. The proposal was not passed.

Faced with a similar pro-posal in 2002, Cluster Coun-cil voted down a gender-split amendment requiring an equal number of male and female positions. The Phil-lipian published an article which found that the gender imbalance in Student Coun-cil is less prevalent at similar boarding schools.

An Overview of Student Government at Andover Since 1973

STAFF REPORT