Student Org Endorsements

Brief Guidelines
1. Equal Opportunity Interviews: Organizations must offer all candidates an equal chance for an endorsement interview, which can be conducted asynchronously via email.
  - The interview can be brief and is reviewed by the organization’s decision-making body before making an endorsement decision.
2. Disclosure of Affiliations: Organizations must email the Chair of the CEC (maya.fonkeu@yale.edu), disclosing any affiliations with candidates they wish to endorse, especially past memberships.
  - Organizations closely affiliated with a candidate should consider not endorsing to maintain impartiality.
3. Debate Attendance: At least one organization member must attend the debate for the endorsement to be valid.
Exclusions for Hellenic Organizations: Greek and social life organizations cannot officially endorse candidates due to their primarily social nature. Endorsements should reflect value alignment or relevant experience, not personal connections.

Detailed Guidelines

Candidates may not receive organizational endorsements before the YCC-YDN Debate. The CEC will only consider endorsements valid (and publish them on the ballot) if at least one member of a given organization attends the debate and has its organization’s president (or equivalent leader) confirm the attending member’s selected endorsements. Candidates may reach out to organizations with a request that the organization considers endorsing in an election or elections at any time during the public campaigning period; this communication is encouraged to include the below guidelines for organizational endorsements but may not include an explicit request to endorse the candidate or candidates.

1. Each organization seeking to endorse a single candidate for any position must meet the following requirements:

a. The organization has offered all candidates for the position in question an individual endorsement interview of equal length and nature. Given the tight turnaround time between the start of public campaigning and the opening of polls, organizations are permitted to ask interview questions asynchronously over email. These interviews should be hosted and reviewed by the relevant decision-making body in advance of an endorsement decision.

i. There is no requirement of how extensive this interview must be. It can range from one to multiple questions. Organizations are in charge of their internal review process for the responses.

b. The organization has emailed the Chair of the CEC, maya.fonkeu@yale.edu, and disclosed any and all affiliations (including past membership with any candidates for the position whom they seek to endorse) in this email. Organizations with strong affiliations to a particular candidate are urged to consider abstaining from the endorsement process, particularly if it would appear that an endorsement is borne out of familiarity instead of shared vision and collaboration. These affiliations will be disclosed—jointly with organizational endorsement—on the public online voting portal.

c. As previously mentioned, at least one member of the organization must attend the YCC-YDN Debate, and the organization’s president (or equivalent leader) must confirm the attending member’s selected endorsements.

2. Hellenic organizations (i.e. Greek or social life organizations) are not eligible to endorse candidates officially on the YaleConnect ballot. The CEC recognizes that although these organizations are not exclusively social in purpose, they are still primarily institutions based on social gathering. The purpose of endorsements is to highlight an alignment of values or previous experience that a candidate possesses—not an indication of who they may know.