Marissa Sullivan, Staff Writer—
Evan Snively ‘24 was elected president of the Denison Campus Governance Association (DCGA) Sept. 16, replacing President-Elect Ashwin Krishnamurthy ‘26. Snively ran uncontested. His appointment follows a series of resignations and uncontested elections throughout the entire DCGA body. Though this election occurred in the fall of 2023, it first diverged from a traditional path when DCGA announced the resignation of newly-elected president Maddie Van Slyke ‘25 on April 20, only five days after publishing the
election results.
Krishnamurthy, who currently acts as the Vice President of DCGA, filled the missing position as a President Elect.
“We’[d] never had a situation like this before,” he said. “We [decided] the best situation in this horrible situation is that I [became] acting president, and we [would] have an election
in the fall.”
As the 2023-2024 school year commenced, Krishnamurthy temporarily substituted for the President, and the second attempt at a presidential election began, only to present a new set of obstacles. Despite losing in the spring presidential election, Snively returned to the ballot once more. But as the election progressed, it became apparent he was alone in a system designed
for competition. DCGA originally planned to host a debate Sept. 13, but the event was morphed into a town hall to account for the singular candidate. While this prospect may be concerning, Snively assured students that he takes the role seriously despite the easy win.
“I’m doing this not because it was available and open, but because I care,” he said. “I believe that I am the best fit for this role and the best fit to get things done for our students and for the people that I love and care about – and that is the Denison community.”
Krishnamurthy defended the election results as well.
“When there’s no competition, you just have to prove that you are the right candidate, and I think Evan has done that,” he said.
The presidential election itself displayed an undeniable lack of participation from students, but when examining the fall semester DCGA elections in their entirety, one begins to suspect a larger issue is at hand.
“There was only one race out of three that was competitive, and one race didn’t have any candidates at all,” Snively said, “[Class of 2027 had] six candidates for six spots… class of [2025], there were no candidates for one spot, and then class of [2026], there were three candidates for two spots.”
The absence of presidential candidates was merely the most visible symptom of a far larger issue within DCGA: A lack of student participation. While students aware of the dwindling number of candidates displayed concern, a large percentage of the student body was unaware of the elections at all. Snively noted that this may come down to a lack of proper advertisement on DCGA’s behalf.
“I think our [town hall] audience was about twenty, and it was just a little disheartening to just see nobody really cared,” Snively said. “It boils down to DCGA’s PR problem.”
Katherine Mims ‘25, DCGA’s new PR chair and co-governor of the Senate, said that she intends to improve the organization’s PR practices compared to the previous school year.
“[The PR committee] honestly did not meet ever, so we never really updated the bulletin board [and] the Instagram wasn’t very active,” she said. “There’s a big disconnect right now between DCGA and the student body.”
Despite these previous PR challenges, Krishnamurthy, Mims and Snively expressed their dedication to amending this issue, and their hopefulness for the future of DCGA.
“We’re innovating this year when it comes to PR,” Krishnamurthy said. Mims said she is renovating the PR committee first by instigating regular meetings.
“We meet once a week and then we have impromptu meetings,” she said. “We will be putting up what sort of bills we’ve been passing and why these are important just so people can look even if they don’t have Instagram, or… don’t come to Senate [meetings]… We want everybody to be engaged.”
Additionally, Snively emphasized that the “three bulletin boards around campus that remained empty last year” are presently in use.
Despite this tumultuous start to the year, members of DCGA seem to display an optimistic attitude towards the future. While its members experiment with new methods of publicity and search for a remedy to their low rates of participation, they encourage students to become engaged.
“We’re working on coming to you, but if you come to us we’ll certainly take you,” Snively said.