The votes are in, and the student body has spoken: Itai Mupanduki ’19 and Tommy Wachtell ’19 are Choate’s 2018-19 Student Body President and Vice President, respectively. Mupanduki summed up his plan for his term in three simple words: “For the people.” Mupanduki explained, “I will be here to benefit you, to facilitate change, and to work to make Choate a place where the focus is more about the students.” Their terms will begin at the start of Spring Term and continue through next year’s Fall and Winter Terms.
All candidates gave two-minute speeches during school meeting on Tuesday, January 30. Then, the student body voted the next day. While student council passed a proposal regarding the possibility of current sixth formers voting in the schoolwide election, the possibility was not realized by the time of this year’s election.
“It feels great. There are a lot of things I want to do for this school, and now I have the platform to get what I want to get done, done,” reflected Mupanduki on how it initially felt to be elected. Said Wachtell about receiving the congratulatory email, “It felt good, but it’s not too different for me; it just means I’m going to keep doing what I normally do – my job. That’s about it.” Wachtell has served on Student Council for two consecutive years and will now begin his third.
One week later, candidates for additional Student Council positions gave speeches during form meetings. For the Class of 2019, Tippa Chan ’19 is Class President, and Carly Casazza ’19, Arjun Katechia ’19, and Clay Zachery ’19 are each Form Representatives. For the Class of 2020, Vikram Sharma ’20 is Class President, and Caroline Rispoli ’20 and William Robertson ’20 are Form Representatives. Shane Baldwin ’21 is the 2021 Class President and Ula Lucas ’21 is one of the Form Representatives. After Nico Campbell ’21 and Anesi Ojior ’21 tied, a runoff election was held, and Ojior elected as the second Form Representative. Elections for Day Student Representatives will take place later in the term, and the new Student Council will choose a secretary in the spring.
Both Mupanduki and Wachtell already have concrete plans regarding the beginnings of their terms. Mupanduki said, “Through my meetings with Mr. Stanley and the Board of Trustees, I’m going to work to reinstitute the 9-9:30 study break. I think that’s the first thing that I want to get done, so we can have that for our next school year, as well as changing the schedule a little bit to include longer lunch blocks, and introduce a forum for the student body.” In the long term, he plans to institute “a more transparent environment where things are being done for the sole purpose of benefiting the student body. I want that to be a larger concern, to take into consideration what benefits the students.”
Wachtell plans first to meet with Mr. Will Morris, Associate Dean of Students and the Director of Residential Life, about the possibility of students requesting visitation electronically. “The REACH app we have on our phones can actually be used to sign in and out of your dorm in the day, they just haven’t activated it yet. I met with the head of ITS and I’m going to meet with Will Morris this week to talk about maybe opening up the possibility of requesting visitation from that app,” explained Wachtell.
Though Mupanduki has never been on the Council, he believes he is capable and willing to learn. “I don’t have prior experience with Student Council, but I do have prior experience with leadership work around campus. I’m the president of Choate Young Democrats and have worked with organizations around campus. So, I have worked with faculty and the Administration and I know how to get things done and organize events and get things through the bureaucracy that is Choate. I think that experience will be extremely helpful,” he reflected. “A lot of the people I will be working with have been on Student Council for years, so I think that combination of leadership experience and helpful advisees will be very useful.”
The president and vice president know each other personally, have worked together in the past, and foresee effective cooperation for their upcoming term. “Itai was my wrestling partner freshman year. We were dormmates in Mem. He’s in my American Studies class, so I’ve worked with him on projects in English and history. I know him personally as well as professionally,” said Wachtell. He continued, “I’m really happy to be working alongside Itai. I think everyone who was running for president was very qualified. He’s a really smart, bright, passionate, efficient kid, and I’m really looking forward to working with him.”
Wachtell plans to see the project he’s been working on since his freshman year through: installing laundry machines in Hill House basement so that laundry machines are available to the many dorms surrounding the Hill complex. “I’ve been working on this since about January of 2016. It’s now 2018, and it’s getting voted on this March. That’s my biggest thing: if that can happen and get passed through, we can get laundry machines in the basement of Hill House.”
Mupanduki, like most candidates, did not take on the position lightly. “I thought about running for a while, but I hadn’t really decided, because I was kind of conflicted on whether or not I was the right person to get those things done. I really felt that I was. When I realized there was nobody else who was speaking up for these issues in the student body, I felt that I would be the one to get this done and to be the one to speak about this,” he said.
Not only did Mupanduki want a voice on Student Council, he felt that the role of president in particular was fit for him. He explained, “I wanted to be president because I feel that the role of president at Choate is extremely unique, in the sense that your job is kind of to facilitate things. Your job is to get the ball rolling and get things done. The form reps and vice president, their job is to institute that agenda and get things through on the minute level, but the president’s job is to overall facilitate the new agenda – to work with the administration, and to get things passed.”
Likewise, Wachtell felt the vice president position suited him. “As a president, you’re not an active voting member of the council. And what happens is you end up managing a lot of the meetings instead of participating in them. I think I have had a really valuable experience at Choate in my three years here, and I want to be able to run on that and have a voice for my constituency that I represent. If you can’t vote, which is what the president does, I feel like it loses a lot of power that comes with the position,” he said.
Wachtell said, “Change takes time, so be patient. But it will come.” The student body will begin to see evidence of these changes when the new student body president and vice president begin their term in the beginning of this coming spring.
