His race for re-election over before it started, FUSA President Hutch Williams ’08 put down his campaign literature on Monday night and did what he’s best known to do: went to a basketball game.
Williams, who sat in an otherwise empty student section for the Stags-Siena women’s game before watching the Fairfield men lose to Marist, was spared the effort of running a campaign on Sunday. His former competition was Frank Fraioli ’08, who dropped out of the race because of a sprained knee that he felt made it impossible to run a viable campaign.
Barring a virtually impossible scenario – that Williams will lose to a write-in candidate – he will become the first president in FUSA history to serve for two years.
Only one prior president – Kevin Neubauer ’05 – was elected as a junior, and Neubauer lost his re-election bid in a landslide to classmate Paul Duffy ’05.
The turn of events was fitting for Williams, who hardly broke a sweat last year in defeating Ryan Neubauer ’07 by 44 percentage points.
“I’m happy about a second term but not happy that the elections are done with,” Williams said. “It’s a relief to know that I’ve basically won, but it’s very much bittersweet. … I’m excited about two terms. I think I’ll be very productive. I’ll get a lot done, but at the same time, now we’ve lost the main focus of the elections.”
Although Williams can take it easy between now and the election, in which he and running mate John Daly ’08 are running unopposed for president and vice president, there is still a set of issues to be resolved: the issues that he and Daly will make the centerpiece of their agenda for the next academic year.
Williams said one of the top priorities of his second term will be to give students more of a voice in matters in which students disagree with the administration’s policies. Such friction was the case earlier this month when administrators advised the Inter Residence Hall Association to change the format for Spring Weekend.
“The administration has stonewalled us on some issues but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to try to break though that wall,” he said. “Just because we’ve been stopped doesn’t mean that we’re going to lie down and accept it.”
Williams said that the biggest accomplishment of his first term was “making people proud to go to Fairfield.”
“Christmas season, I got some cards from different people, some freshmen some sophomores. They thanked me for making them proud to go to Fairfield, and that really hit home for me,” he said.
Daly, running as Williams’s running mate after Vice President Megan McConville ’08 opted not to run for re-election, said it is critical for him and Williams, along with other FUSA officials, to be a better voice for the student body.
“When something comes up and the administration is like, ‘I’m sorry, we’re not going to change this,’ instead of giving up, we need to keep at it,” he said.
At times when the administration has made plans that turned out to be unpopular with students, Williams said, FUSA was kept out of the loop until the plans were already finalized.
Such was the case, he said, with the plan to alter the formation of Spring Weekend, which the FUSA Senate formally opposed earlier this month by passing an emergency resolution.
“It’s hard to be prepared to be on the table and start talking about things if we’re not allowed to be in on it,” he said. “We need to get the administration to start letting us in on things like that. If they’re considering canceling a tradition, we need to be aware of it because we’re the voice of the student body.”
To read the breaking news story on Frank Fraioli ’08’s withdrawal from the presidential race, which broke on Sunday night, go to www.fairfieldmirror.com.
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