Owen Dudney

Sophomore and current Senate Head Owen Dudney is tired of the status quo. “The committee system, in general, has been the same way, not because the way we currently do things is the best way to do things, but because it’s easy to keep things the same,” Dudney said. “I think we need to start experimenting in order to develop a better committee system. In order to better facilitate communication and the exchange of ideas between committees, we need people to move between committees more easily than they currently do.”

The central tenet of Dudney’s platform is his plan to eradicate the committee sign-up system so that students can join whatever committee meeting they want. Attendance at a committee meeting, irrespective of the committee, would still be compulsory. Dudney believes that through this system, livelier discussions would occur in committee meetings. His experience as a Senate Head, in which capacity he observed that having groups of friends in the meeting tended to strengthen the substance of the conversation, inspired this plan. Through this system, Dudney believes that students will gravitate toward rooms with their friends, which he encourages. “I think making committees more like Senate would be an enormously helpful thing,” Dudney said.

The possibility of varied attendance across committees does not bother Dudney because he supports the increased allocation of Student Government budget funds to committees with subpar meeting attendance. “I can theoretically imagine, especially in the earlier stages, some of the smaller committees not having enough people to have a productive discussion,” Dudney said. “I think that giving the small committees that can’t get enough people a small budget to buy some food would help entice people.”

To tackle the impeachment woes that have plagued the committee system, Dudney intends to review committee bylaws rigorously. “If I were able to talk with the committee heads and try to redirect their goals so that there’s not that much overlap and redirect their goals closer to what the founders of the committee system intended,” Dudney said, “then we would be able to improve the caliber of the events that are being thrown. That would help stymie the endless tide of impeachment that happens every year.”

Unlike one of his opponents, junior Will Ehlich, Dudney expects to wield a powerful guiding hand to encourage committee heads’ participation. He is also considering changing, primarily lowering, the event requirement for some committees. “I think the two events per semester is too universally applied,” Dudney said.

Also, unlike both Ehrlich and junior Daniel Mansueto, Dudney will be a junior next year, but he does not view his grade as an impediment. “Ever since I was a little kid, everyone has been telling me, ‘This next year is going to be so difficult,’” Dudney said. “‘You’re not going to be able to handle it.’ It never happened. Ever since third grade, it’s happened, and I’ve always been prepared for the academics that are thrown at me. I’m confident that I will be able to handle junior year.”