And they're off!

Yesterday marked the official start of the first campus-wide race for the presidency and vice-presidency of the Undergraduate Council.

"We've had our formal meeting and all of the candidates are certified," said Samuel J. Martland '96, a council delegate from Dunster House and candidate contact person for the Council Election Commission, which is supervising the election.

Candidates will be able to pull their names from the ballot before a withdrawal deadline to be determined by the Harvard Computer Society (HCS) early next week, Martland said. HCS has written the program which will electronically tally the student vote.

"The human function will be to make sure that the voting closes on Friday the 19th of April," he added. "We haven't yet set the hour at which voting will close. That will depend on how long it will take the computer to tally the votes."

Those running cite a variety of reasons and goals for their respective campaigns.

Current council president Robert M. Hyman '98-'97 and his running mate Lamelle D. Rawlins '99 said they would like the opportunity to continue to pursue current initiatives including Core reform, student input into faculty hiring and minority and gender related issues.

"Part of the reason that the [current] council was so successful was because we had a broad range of student empowerment issues which we fought for," Hyman said.

But some candidates say they feel a need to rethink the council's immediate vision.

"We need to refocus on issues which are really relevant to the students," said Brian R. Blais '97, council vice-president and presidential hopeful. "We need to try to have more community building events."

Others say they think more drastic measures are necessary to revitalize student confidence and participation in their student government.

"My first act [as council president] would be to work to dismantle the Undergraduate Council and completely restructure [our] student government," said Jason D. Hill '97.

Hill also said he did not like the council's policy of reimbursing candidates the $100 allotted for campaign expenses by the election commission.

"I do not expect the council to reimburse me for my campaign," Hill said.

Currently there are 12 undergraduates seeking the council presidency: Blais, Hill, Hyman, John J. Appelbaum '97, Matthew B. Bakal '97, Alissa S. Brotman '97, Joseph G. Cleemann '97, Rudd W. Coffey '97, Adam D. Green '99, Benjamin R. Kaplan '99-'98, Michael R. Petitpas '98 and Edward B. Smith III '97.

The four vice-presidential hopefuls are Rawlins, Elizabeth A. Haynes '98, Christopher R. McFadden '97 and Tally Zingher '99