Having served on the Freshman Class Council and Yale College Council, Mike Bronfin ’11 envisions his role as YCC secretary as being the “go-to person” connecting Elis to the Yale administration.

Citing his experience and organizational skills as his key strengths, Bronfin said he hopes to strengthen links between student groups and the Office of New Haven and State Affairs, and streamline campus communications by establishing a updated YCC Web site.

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“I feel that improving communication between the YCC and Yale students is crucial especially since YSAC is now dissolved,” he said.

Bronfin — a self-proclaimed epicure from New Orleans who brings his own spice shakers to dinner — describes himself as a driving force behind the Iron Chef Yale cooking challenge and last month’s Mental Health Week. As a YCC representative from Jonathan Edwards College, Bronfin has also worked on Eli Days 2009, the YCC Discounts program and helping improve shuttle service to Science Hill.

Unlike many of the other candidates in the secretary race, Bronfin argues, he has the practical know-how to implement his agenda of helping student groups work together: Iron Chef Yale was co-sponsored by Yale TV and the Yale Globalist, while Mental Health Week supplemented e-mail announcements with poster boards in order to better reach out to campus.

Bronfin believes such experience gives him a clear edge in the race for the YCC secretary position.

“Some of them have decent ideas but none of them are on the YCC,” he explained, “It is very difficult to be on the YCC executive board if they don’t know how it is run.”

Of Bronfin’s competitors, Rustin Fakheri ’12 is an associate member of the YCC, while both Victoria Gilcrease ’12 and Reese Faust ’10 are self-described “outsiders,” having never run for a student government position before.

Nevertheless, Bronfin concedes that for all his experience and commitment to the YCC, he is not perfect. He cited a tendency to take on more than he can handle and the potential to react adversely to pressure as his weaknesses.

He is also among the few to have fainted in two countries at once. “I once passed out on the bridge over the Niagara Falls,” he said.