The selection of this year's Yeshiva College valedictorian will follow a new set of rules formulated last year by the Deans Office in conjunction with the Student-Faculty Senate . The new rules, which formalized nomination and voting procedures, aim to focus the election on substantive issues. "The Senate wanted to remove it [the elections] from being a popularity contest and wanted the vote to have substance," recalled Yeshiva College Associate Dean Joyce Jesionowski.

To that end, the Senate implemented a multi-step procedure, in which a nominating committee selects approximately ten seniors with the highest grade point averages after having taken a minimum of 88 credits on campus. These ten students are placed on the ballot, which is then voted on over a four-day period by Yeshiva College seniors.

At the preliminary round of elections, which were held this Monday and Tuesday, voters pared the list of eleven candidates to three. The final round of elections will take place Wednesday and Thursday, where seniors will rank the three remaining candidates one through three, with the valedictorian emerging as the recipient of the lowest amount of "points."

Explaining the need for such a drawn-out process, Dean Jesionowski emphasized her office's goal of "trying to accommodate the hectic schedules of the seniors; we want to guarantee a high voter turnout."

The desire for greater turnout than in previous years, which recorded less than seventy voters for the honor, strikes some students as incongruent with a number of facets of the voting process, including the location of this year's elections in the Deans Office. "The elections should be held in a more populated area like in Rubin," remarked one senior. "How many people actually go through the Deans Office on a regular basis?" Nevertheless, YC Dean Norman Adler explained the stationing as required for a fully honest vote. "The Deans Office can only guarantee the efficiency and integrity of the process if it is conducted under our administrative supervision. Because it is one of our highest academic honors, it has to be blameless," he commented.

Another change this year is the autobiographical information packet about candidates provided to voters. All candidates were asked to list their majors, minors, extracurricular activities, academic honors, summer internships, their most significant academic achievement, and any other special qualifications. The eleven candidates for Yeshiva College's most prestigious honor included: Jason Cyrulnik, Yakov Fleischmann, Isaiah ("Shaya 'Ish-Shalom'") Friedman, Ryan Girnun, Marc Katzman, David Krieger, Akiva Marcus, Joseph Platnick, Asaf Rabinowitz, Arash Radparvar, and Raymond Sultan.

Jesionowski praised the candidate information packet for allowing voters "a basis for fair comparison between choices." This information notwithstanding, many candidates doubt the objectivity of voters. "I'm convinced that the most popular candidate will win regardless of what the Senate implements, as long as students are voting," predicted one of the candidates, who refused to speculate on whether he was one of the popular choices.

Sources on the Senate reveal that this candidate's gripe was actually addressed indirectly by the body, which considered the option of establishing a faculty committee that would select the valedictorian outright. Student senators opposed this proposal, however. "Faculty members who have taught the student[s] are in the best position to judge the quality of the students' intellectual ability and achievement," explained Dr. Will Lee, an Associate Professor of English who sits on the Senate, "but the problem is that different faculty members know different students, so that there's no side-by-side comparability."

While this year's rules are holdovers from last year, a new regulation has been passed in time for the current voting process. The Yeshiva College Honors Committee decided last week to allow seniors staying an extra fall semester in order to complete their senior honors theses to be included on the valedictorian ballot of the previous spring. This rule impacts some of the current candidates, including Yakov Fleischmann and Shaya ('Isaiah' Friedman) Ish-Shalom.

Dr. Lee, who co-chairs the committee, explained the ruling. "We allowed students to be valedictorians as long as they met the requirements to graduate this year," he remarked. "If a student chooses to stay an extra semester or two, we welcome that, while hoping to ensure that he is judged by those who know him best - his classmates."

The students affected by the ruling praised it as well. "I'm gratified by what I feel was an appropriate decision by the committee," remarked Fleischmann. "The bottom line is that spiritually, I could graduate in May with the rest of my class, but there's no reason why I should be penalized for staying an extra semester to finish the Honors Program."