Chance Carlisle

College/Year: Saybrook ’05

Hometown: Memphis, Tenn.

Major: Political Science

Chance Carlisle ’05, who is running for chair of the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, said he brings something different the table this election season. He is a former varsity football player and the current Zeta Psi fraternity vice president.

“I really want the Yale College Council to be representative of the student body,” Carlisle said. “Right now, with voter participation around 30 percent, it’s not going to cut it. You don’t see many people like me run. It doesn’t need to be that way. Our student government needs to include more diversity, including athletes and fraternity members.”

Carlisle stressed the importance of having an alumni donor base for the UOFC. He said his chief goal is to lure alumni and corporate donors to help expand to the UOFC budget.

Carlisle also wants to separate the UOFC from the Yale College Dean’s Office, which he said would give the UOFC more control over its budget.

Katrina Gipson

College/Year: Silliman ’04

Hometown: Ann Arbor, Mich.

Major: Biomedical Engineering

Katrina Gipson ’04, a candidate for Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee chairwoman, said she wants to help student organizations learn how to get funded. She said many organizations do not know about UOFC funding and, if they do, they do not know how to obtain it. Gipson said she also wants to expand the types of activities UOFC funds to include groups that involve outreach to New Haven. “It should fund more community activities, not just pay for food at meetings in WLH,” she said. Gipson is no stranger to community activity. She is the former co-president of the Black Student Alliance at Yale and was heavily involved in the Afro-American Cultural House. She is a community tutor with “Women in Youth Supporting Each Other” and works with neglected children in New Haven’s “Children In Placement” program.

Matt Harsha-Strong

College/Year: Trumbull ’06

Hometown: Novi, Mich.

Major: undeclared; likely Ethics, Politics & Economics and International Studies

After helping to reform the bylaws of the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee this year, Matt Harsha-Strong ’06 said he wants to continue his work on the UOFC as its chairman. Harsha-Strong, who currently serves as UOFC secretary — the committee’s second-in-command — and representative to the Yale College Council, said his experience allows him to increase the UOFC budget to accommodate more applications from student organizations. This year, the UOFC became an official part of the YCC. As chair, Harsha-Strong said, he would compile a guide for student organizations and work to increase the credibility of the YCC. Harsha-Strong said his experience reforming the committee’s structure and bylaws will allow him to efficiently advance the UOFC.

Andrew O’Connor

College/Year: Trumbull ’05

Hometown: East Tawas, Mich.

Major: Political Science

As treasurer for the Yale College Democrats, Andrew O’Connor ’05 said he is frustrated with problems he sees in the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee. O’Connor said the YCD waited for five months for already promised funding this fall. To ease the process, he said, he wants the UOFC to handle its own administrative work rather than working through the Yale College Dean’s Office. “This is very much building on [current UOFC Chairman Elliott Mogul’s] reform plan,” O’Connor said. “The key next year is going to be developing a relationship with the Dean’s Office.” O’Connor said he will create an undergraduate organizations handbook that provides information on how groups can get funding more efficiently. “This kind of information is available, but most organizations don’t know hoe to get it, so I think a handbook of sorts would be helpful,” he said.

— Philip Rucker