Students will vote for Campus Y co-presidents Tuesday

Student government isn’t the only organization looking for fresh faces on Tuesday.

The Campus Y, an institution that calls itself the center for social justice at UNC for more than 150 years, will hold its annual election for two co-presidents Tuesday.

Four candidates split into teams of two are running for the positions.

One of the teams includes Jack Witty, who is co-chairman of Best Buddies, an organization that pairs college students with intellectually or developmentally disabled individuals in the community. He is partnered with Campus Y’s membership director Danielle Allyn.

On the other team is Dinesh McCoy, Campus Y’s co-director of outreach, and Shauna Rust, co-chairwoman of Tar Heel TABLE, which is an organization dealing with childhood hunger and poverty in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Because both teams have someone with executive board experience and co-chairman experience, it is considered to be a close match for the roughly 650 Campus Y members who will be allowed to vote on Tuesday.

“I would say it’s definitely a challenging position,” said current co-president Cora Went. “It’s important to know how to communicate well and be able to form really close relationships quickly with people.”

Went and her co-president Natalie Borrego started their presidency with roughly 10 goals in mind, such as connecting members to internship possibilities, providing career development, making it easier to join the Campus Y and connecting with other organizations at UNC.

Went and Borrego believe they have made steps toward achieving each of these goals and hope next year’s presidents continue them.

“One of the things we focus on in the Y is sustainability, so before we start a program we make sure that it can be sustained, so we’re always looking a few years ahead so that before we start a program it can be sustained in the near future,” Borrego said.

Although both candidate teams have similar goals to their predecessors, particularly with partnering and connecting with other organizations, they each have slightly different approaches to how they plan to improve the 150-year-old institution.

Witty and Allyn hope to increase membership and inclusivity of the Y by making it easier for members to join. They hope to get more people interested in the organization by having a running banner of social justice news in the Student Union and a carnival-themed Social Justice Fest in the Pit.

The pair would like not only to improve Campus Y’s connections to Greek life and student government, but between its own members as well.

“I think at some point we’ll get sick of seeing ourselves and hearing ourselves talk, so let’s showcase all our members,” Allyn said. “We’d really like to make it so the public face of the Y is more than just the co-presidents; we want to highlight all the leaders of the Y.”

McCoy and Rust want to reduce financial burdens on members. Rust, who could not attend a service project in Nepal last summer due to insufficient funding, hopes to start a grant program for Y members interested in doing service projects abroad.

Another issue the pair is concerned about is a new requirement for UNC students to undergo background checks before working with minors. Doing so costs about $20 due to a discount from UNC’s administration.

Rust plans to have the Y raise money to help cover the fees or work with administration to amend the requirement. Rust and McCoy worry the fees may still hinder some individuals’ abilities to participate in social justice movements.

“There’s not one part of the Y that’s more valuable than the others,” McCoy said. “We need to make sure everyone has the resources to engage in whatever things are their passion.”

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