The following candidates have been nominated for positions on the Lawrence Committee. New candidates may be nominated until February 7th. For more details about the election, please see this page.
- President
- Karin McDonald – "Over the last year, I have enjoyed serving our community as vice president of the Lawrence Committee. During this time, I have learned about how the committee operates to provide assistance to residents, organize enjoyable social events, and communicate with the graduate housing department to continuously help improve our lifestyle. Given the opportunity, I look forward to applying this knowledge and serving as president of the Lawrence Committee. Thank you for your consideration."
- Karin McDonald – "Over the last year, I have enjoyed serving our community as vice president of the Lawrence Committee. During this time, I have learned about how the committee operates to provide assistance to residents, organize enjoyable social events, and communicate with the graduate housing department to continuously help improve our lifestyle. Given the opportunity, I look forward to applying this knowledge and serving as president of the Lawrence Committee. Thank you for your consideration."
- Vice President
- Christina Hultholm – "For the past two years, I have advocated for graduate student interests, both as Chair of the Graduate Student Government (GSG) and as the Lawrence Committee delegate to the GSG. I served on the Lawrence Committee this past year, and in this role, I have had the opportunity to represent residents’ interests in the housing policy committee as well as in the GSG. I also worked with members of the Lawrence Committee to organize events for our community, such as an international food competition and a fall festival. I hope to take a more active role in sponsoring community events in the upcoming year as Vice President of the Lawrence Committee. I am excited to work with residents to try to make a positive impact on life in our community, and I look forward to organizing fun events for our residents. Thank you for your consideration for this position."
- Weicheng Lian – "I am a 3-rd year economics PHD and it is my second year living here at Lawrence. The reason I want to run for the VICE PRESIDENT is that my academic background as an economic student makes me very easy to understand and handle financial issues related to the Lawrence committee, which is the majority of the responsibility delegated to the vice president and also that I have strong desire to serve in a committee representing the interest of Lawrence residents. I am a person very active and outgoing and always want to serve the public interest. I worked in the data lab at the Firestone library to help undergraduates with their junior and senior papers in the past two years, was a newsletter editor in the association of Chinese students last year, worked in the IMF as a summer economist last summer, organized a trip of 14 people to the Delaware Watergap last semester, initiated and organized a forum discussing current issues and led a session named "the recovery of the U.S. economy" recently. All these experience will help me serve in the committee. I will work hard. Believe me! Thanks for considering my candidacy!"
- Christina Hultholm – "For the past two years, I have advocated for graduate student interests, both as Chair of the Graduate Student Government (GSG) and as the Lawrence Committee delegate to the GSG. I served on the Lawrence Committee this past year, and in this role, I have had the opportunity to represent residents’ interests in the housing policy committee as well as in the GSG. I also worked with members of the Lawrence Committee to organize events for our community, such as an international food competition and a fall festival. I hope to take a more active role in sponsoring community events in the upcoming year as Vice President of the Lawrence Committee. I am excited to work with residents to try to make a positive impact on life in our community, and I look forward to organizing fun events for our residents. Thank you for your consideration for this position."
- Secretary
- Hani Goodarzi – "This is the third year that I am living in Lawrence and during these past years I have been impressed by how well the Lawrence committee is handling the everyday problems as well as organizing great social events both for student and spouses. Now that I am a fourth year graduate student with the bulk of my research already published, I have the time and resources to pay back part of this debt of gratitude by serving on this committee. If others see me fit for this position, I am ready to be an active member in the Lawrence community."
- Rafael Dix Carneiro – "I have been regularly taking part in the Lawrence committee meetings since the beginning of the Fall, writing the committee minutes that are posted on the website. I started doing so because the current Secretary, my wife, Denise Kassab, was offered a job in Washington, DC, and hence could not attend the meetings during the week. I am seeking the position of Secretary not only because I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in the committee but also because I am comfortable with the responsibilities of the position and I am certain that I can perform them well. I particularly look forward to the teamwork involved with regards to the organizing of events and meeting new people. Finally, I am positive that I will represent with much enthusiasm the interests of Lawrence residents within the University community. Thank you for considering my candidacy!"
- Jakub Szefer – "Hi, my name is Jakub and I am a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the ELE department, I am also a first year resident at Lawrence apartments this year. I am currently in charge of a Polish Language Table and of a Computer Architecture Reading Group — however, these responsibilities will end for me at the end of the spring semester and I would like to transfer my energy to another useful activity. I am interested in
joining the committee to be able to have some influence about the community where I live. I am interested in the position of secretary as I think it may be a good entry position for someone just joining the Lawrence Committee. As for my involvement, I have worked with Maja (who is the garden coordinator) on a (failed) attempt to get plastic shopping bag recycling boxes installed in the laundry rooms and also suggested
purchase of plastic bottle recycling bins for the laundry rooms (the bins are still missing in action). Thought my involvement with the Lawrence community has not been so fruitful so far, I hope that by being part of the committee I will be exposed to more of the behind-the-scenes activities and from them I will get new ideas and make new attempts at things which could be improved. Thank you for reading this far and I hope you’ll consider my candidacy."
- Social Chair
- Sevil Cakir Kilincoglu
- Webmaster
- Shuwa Xu
- GSG Representative
- Kevin Collins – "Over the past four years, I have served on the GSG Assembly and GSG Executive Committee in several capacities, including as Politics Department representative, Transportation and Parking Committee member, Academic Affairs committee co-chair, and currently as the Parliamentary Secretary, which is functionally the vice-president of the GSG’s executive committee. In these past roles, I’ve already served informally as an advocate for the Lawrence community, which I have called home for my entire time at Princeton. For example, in working with the Transportation and Parking Committee, I have helped develop policies and bus routes than ensure that Lawrence residents can easily get to and from campus. Now I would like to serve as Lawrence’s representative in an offical capacity. I believe that the broad and high-level experience I bring to the job give me the necessary strategic insight and advocacy skills to be the most effective champion of our friends and neighbors to the GSG and the University administration. With the looming challenges of increasing rents and shrinking housing availability, our community needs to put forward its strongest advocates to secure the best outcomes for our residents. I hope that you will entrust me with this responsibility, and ask for your vote for GSG Representative."
- Serdar Selamet – "I have being serving as the Civil and Environmental Engineering Representative for the past year where I successfully bridged the relationship between the graduate student body of the department and the faculty members. I am readily aware for responsibilities as a liaison between the Committee and the GSG."
- Garden Coordinator
- Maja Klosinska – "I’m Maja, the current Lawrence Garden Coordinator and gardener. I am a committed and active Committee member, happy to devote my time and skill to improving the garden and helping the gardeners. I’m also committed to working for the Lawrence community as a whole, helping organize fun events, and dealing with issues that arise in the complex.
During the last year of my tenure as Garden Coordinator I have introduced many improvements aimed to enhance the gardening experience. I devoted a lot of time and energy to the maintenance of the garden. I regularly monitored the hoses and nozzles and replaced them as needed, took care of repairs, provided leaf mulch and wood chips on a regular basis. I also maintained the tools in good condition and purchased replacements for ones found broken last year – ex. a wheelbarrow, which I myself assembled. I helped organize multiple Lawrence community events. I’ve been always happy to help the gardeners with plot assignments, watering, dealing with issues and more. My most important contribution is the application for, purchase and assembly of the new CompostTwin composter, which was bought with funds from the High Meadows Foundation (Princeton Office of Sustainability). All residents are welcome to use it. The projects I would like to work on this year are purchasing a lawnmower in order to reduce the amount of weeds which grow between the plots, installing a rain barrel to cut the use of water, adding new features to the Lawrence website and organizing more fun socializing opportunities for the gardeners and the Lawrence community as a whole.
I am an effective, committed and experienced garden coordinator who loves gardening. I would be happy to apply my knowledge (MS. in botany) and energy into making the garden even more enjoyable for the gardeners and living in Lawrence Apartments more fun for all Residents. Thank you for considering my candidacy." - Robert Cooper – "Hello fellow Lawrencians. My name is Rob Cooper and I’m running for the Lawrence Garden Coordinator. I have been active with the Lawrence garden and community for several years, attending committee meetings and serving as a proxy. I’ve also been active in environmentally oriented groups throughout the university such as SURGE and my department’s Sustainability Committee. I have grown vegetables in the Lawrence garden for the past 3 years, and enjoyed meeting many of you out there. However, I have noticed areas where the gardening experience could use improvement, and I have several ideas for how to fix it.
Years of rototilling and neglect for nutrients have robbed the soil of its productive capacity, and I would like to explore new methods such as winter cover crops to nourish bigger, juicier tomatoes. The garden is also choked with weeds, which can make keeping up with a plot nigh onto impossible. A single year of proper weed control would make future gardening far easier, with fewer weed seeds in the ground to sprout. Third, gardeners should not have to choose between a green garden and a summer vacation; I would like to institute a “watering bank” to help residents keep their plots alive while away for a week or two. For those who are not sure they want to commit to an entire plot I would help them find garden partners with whom to share the work and the bounty. And finally in the even that plots are abandoned, rather than letting them die and weed over as in the past, I’d like to donate their produce to a local food bank. Community-wise, I am a proponent of interesting, themed events that make people actually want to stay and mingle, not just grab & run. Thank you and have a good semester!"
- Maja Klosinska – "I’m Maja, the current Lawrence Garden Coordinator and gardener. I am a committed and active Committee member, happy to devote my time and skill to improving the garden and helping the gardeners. I’m also committed to working for the Lawrence community as a whole, helping organize fun events, and dealing with issues that arise in the complex.