Alum Elected Elon University Freshmen Class President

Hawken students continue their leadership roles at colleges across the country, as Alex Nickodem `05 demonstrates. A freshman at Elon University in North Carolina, Alex was elected Class President just one week after classes began. His experience with student government began at Hawken, where he was a Senator-at-large his sophomore, junior, and senior years. Alex decided to run for Class President in hopes of feeling more connected to Elon, and to generate positive changes for the University. Any student can run for the Class President position, but Alex said that it is particularly difficult to do so as a freshman because you barely know your classmates before you are asking for their vote. Alex had to collect 75 signatures from the freshman class before he could enter the election, and after doing so had to generate campaign support by word-of-mouth. There weren`t any debates between the candidates, nor was there any opportunity to speak in front of a large portion of the freshman class. Students are permitted to post up to 100 flyers for the campaign, but Alex only hung 3 posters and 5 flyers, choosing instead to speak directly to as many individuals as he could. Alex hung one of those posters outside of his 3rd-story dorm room, stating his campaign theme: \"Nickodem for President: A Cancer Survivor Helping You Survive College.\" To ensure that students were looking up at the sign, Alex played music out his window all day. His greatest campaign strategy, though, was going door-to-door with his vacuum offering to vacuum dorm rooms. He successfully vacuumed 58 rooms in 3 hours. On the day of the election, with only 20 minutes left in voting, Alex realized that it could be very close, so he decided to re-visit those students whose rooms he had vacuumed to remind them to vote. Of all the rooms he re-visited, 10 had still not voted, but did so upon Alex`s return. At the close of the election, Alex won by 4 votes. Speaking with students both before and after the campaign, Alex took note of the many everyday changes the students would like and has been working on the ways he can help to make them happen. Getting involved helped Alex \"feel more comfortable at Elon, and provided a greater sense of familiarity to the University and its students.\"