note: this is me (chaos) getting on my soapbox for awhile. it's pretentious as all hell. feel free to take it with a whole lot of salt, and maybe even some pepper.
fred's procedure was designed to work and prevent ambiguity about results in a case where there is open hostility between the two sides. obviously, if the two teams are friendly and willing to abide by the results of the elections, it's still necessary to be somewhat cautious, but you don't need to stick to the letter by any individual step of your chosen procedure unless people would object to your doing otherwise. in other words, use your common sense -- swilfolk are generally nice people.
on another related topic, it's a good idea for people who might want to run for president to be thinking about this pretty early in the fall semester, and to make it known. freshman shouldn't run for president as serious candidates (it's easier to be president if you've watched each event happen at least once first), and seniors are ineligible, so potential candidates are sophomore and junior nonmembers. there's nothing wrong with the current presidents trying to keep an eye on who might want to succeed them (and making sure at least one person does) and telling potential candidates who else is around so that they can form teams if they want.
some demographics: as of the end of 1999, 29 people have been swil president. of these, twenty-one have served for 1 year, seven for 2 years, and one (jim huang) for 3.5 years. the first time there were two presidents was in 1984, and that was the norm from 1984-1995 (the only exceptions being perry deess in 1986, jed hartman in fall 1988, and jeff hildebrand in 1991). the first time there were three presidents was in 1996, and, since then, only one slate of fewer than three (myself and kyla tornheim in 1999) has served.
there seems to be a clear trend in this. the number of activities swil does has increased over the years, and the number of tasks which are lumped into the job of the presidency has also increased, possibly even faster. the only things that absolutely need to be taken care of by the presidents are running meeting, writing swilnews, acting as swil contact people for both nonmembers and the college at large, and making sure someone is doing everything else. those are nontrivial jobs, but it's still possible that one person could serve effectively as swil president.
strictly in my opinion, of course, it's bad for the presidents to do too much because it discourages other people from being as actively involved. so it seems pretty reasonable for one person with a talent for delegation to reverse the trend. (note: you probably want to try this in a year with lots of enthusiastic frosh.) obviously, there's nothing wrong with having two or three presidents, although four hasn't been tried yet, and seems unreasonable (you have to be able to schedule time once a week to write swilnews, after all). alright, enough of this; back to information...
By: chaos golubitsky '00, fred bush '98, amy' marinello '02 -- Last revised: 13 March 2000