Special elections will be decided today

A student government special election took earlier this week to fill the vacancy of former class of 2018 representative and Chair of Student Organizations Aliénor d’Arenberg‘18, who resigned Monday.

Student government members said that the new representative for 2018 will be announced today. At press time, the four people who ran for the position were Keely Scott ‘18, Christopher Felix ‘18, Ben Janacek‘18 and Brianna Lucciola ‘18.

d’Arenberg is the sixth person to resign from student government since the beginning of last semester.She was a part of the organization since her freshman year and ran for president last semester as a sophomore.

Although she did not win the presidency, d’Arenberg said that that is not the reason why she is leaving the organization.

d’Arenberg said she is resigning so she can focus more on academics and take care of her horse, Christie, who is being sent to the U.S. from England in the next few weeks. d’Arenberg is a member of the equestrian team at Lafayette, as well as the Lafayette Activities Forum. She said she will continue those obligations during this semester.

d’Arenberg was described by her friend and former running mate, Othman Guennoun’17, as one of the most dedicated people on student government.

“There are different levels of being into student government,” he said. “And she was definitely up there.”

Guennoun added that he thinks d’Arenberg wanted to stay as committed to student government as she had always been, but felt she couldn’t. d’Arenberg confirmed.

“I feel like I wouldn’t have been mentally as dedicated or dedicated enough,”d’Arenberg said.

Lafayette College Student Government President L’Eunice Faust ‘16 said that everyone was shocked when d’Arenberg resigned.

But Faust, Guennoun and d’Arenberg all agreed that it is better that d’Arenberg leave in the beginning of the semester so that they will have an easier time finding a replacement for her.

According to Faust, the elections occurred quickly because members of student government want the new representative to be there for training, which is this Sunday.

At the training, student government will vote on who will take d’Arenberg’s role as chair of student organizations. It could be the person who replaced her as representative for 2018, or another member of the organization.

Until then, d’Arenberg said she is going to continue to help the rest of her committee with whatever questions they may need her to answer.

d’Arenberg’s parting advice to her successor is to have a really good understanding of how the school is run before actually trying to pass policy.