Editor’s Note: The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board interviewed 12 candidates for the position of University Judiciary Committee representative. Each interview lasted approximately 15 minutes, and all candidates were asked the same baseline questions. The endorsements below are based solely on the content of these interviews.
This year, The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board endorses four candidates running for University Judiciary Committee representative — third-year College student Allison McVey, first-year College student Rose Maggio, second-year College student Zach Davidson and third-year Batten student Ella Abney. All of these candidates presented innovative and achievable suggestions to strengthen UJC’s internal processes. At this moment, this focus on internal, institutional reform is essential — UJC has increasingly taken on more complex cases, and their case processing time has soared as a result. Through holistic perspectives on safety and restorative sanctions, comprehensive visions for diverse recruitment and strategies for internal review, each candidate exhibited values which will affirm and improve upon UJC’s reputation for being a restorative and relevant student self-governance organization.
McVey is currently serving as the Vice Chair for Sanctions and has been a representative for the College for the past two years. Her time in UJC has given her a knowledgeable perspective on the inner workings of the organization, specifically as such workings relate to internal transparency and communication. For example, her stated goal of promoting transparency regarding the different appeals processes will prove useful for fostering student buy-in and promoting just processes. In addition to this, McVey discussed safety in an exceptionally nuanced and knowledgeable manner, one which is cognizant of the threat of hazing and UJC’s role in adjudicating this safety violation. By correcting internal resolution processes, she believes UJC not only has the power to curb hazing, but also to address external criticism of UJC from people who may doubt the efficacy of student self-governance. In this way, McVey’s deep understanding of UJC’s internal processes will improve UJC as an institution and will implicitly foster external buy-in.
Maggio is presently on the First Year Judiciary Committee, where her experience with first-year students has cultivated an admirable focus on and an innovative method for promoting student safety. Instead of simply focusing on the adjudication of hazing cases, Maggio suggested that a ballooned processing time can be addressed with a robust, internal analysis of whether UJC’s anti-hazing policies and sanctions have a tangible impact on the hazing culture. Through this internal review, she hopes that UJC can become more internally transparent and self-aware. Additionally, Maggio astutely recognized that ongoing threats to student speech and student self-governance are real, and in many ways constitute a threat to student safety. As such, she believes that UJC must take a more active role in the maintenance of both. We applaud her innovative and holistic understanding of student safety and believe that this perspective will prove invaluable to UJC.
Davidson currently serves as a counselor for UJC, and in his time with the organization, he has been deeply committed to learning and understanding UJC’s processes. In discussing the case processing time, Davidson emphasized the need to correct inefficiencies in the committee’s internal organization. He proposed changes to the committee’s meeting design and group structure that are both promising and realistic. With such changes, Davidson aims to increase UJC’s capacity to process cases while also reducing its case processing time, addressing the committee’s two most pressing challenges. Davidson also recognized UJC’s historical difficulty in recruiting low-income and first-generation representation among its members, explaining that this must be addressed through recruitment. In this way, Davidson’s internal focus was supplemented by his value for representative leadership. Davidson’s vision for internal efficiency and collaboration within the University community will work to promote a committee that is truly representative of the student body.
Abney is currently a UJC Representative for Batten. Like Davidson, she hopes to further improve the representative nature of UJC positions by recruiting more low-income students. In addition to expressing a value for this sort of representation, Abney also articulated a practical way to promote it — financial assistance which makes UJC more accessible to students. Serving as the chair of UJC’s Endowment Committee, Abney is uniquely positioned to make this position a reality. Moreover, Abney’s understanding of UJC’s finances includes a desire to achieve greater financial independence for the committee. Such a goal is particularly admirable, considering that the financial independence of UJC would protect it from ongoing threats to the existence of student self-governance organizations on Grounds. With a comprehensive sense of UJC’s financial realities and an ambitious set of goals, we are confident that Abney will be an excellent advocate for the sustainability of UJC.
All four of these candidates articulated innovative and practical ideas to better promote the internal sustainability of UJC. They each advocated for policies which advance the organization’s internal processes in the hopes of generating external buy-in and fulfilling their duty to the student body in order to benefit the external community. Moreover, each candidate paired a realistic interpretation of threats to student self-governance with tangible initiatives to legitimize and strengthen the UJC. We have no doubt that each candidate is capable of achieving their stated goals, and students can be confident that each endorsed candidate will conscientiously represent the student body’s values in UJC.
The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board is composed of the Executive Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, the two Opinion Editors, the two Senior Associates and an Opinion Columnist. The board can be reached at eb@cavalierdaily.com.
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