News · W&M News · 2004 archive · W&M Students Want to Run for Cit

Until recently, it was unheard of for students at William and Mary to run for local elected office such as City Council. In fact, city officials say it’s never happened.

But by late January, sophomore Seth Saunders was the first to challenge that trend, announcing at a press conference at the Williamsburg Community Building his intentions to win one of three open council seats in the May 4 election. A few weeks later, three more students, juniors Travis Luther Lowe, Serene Alami and Robert Ryan-Chin Forrest, joined the mix of student candidates vying for seats on City Council.

The students’ campaigns were prompted by what they consider unfair rental regulations adopted recently by city officials. In January, a local landlord who publicly opposed the city’s rental regulations warned Williamsburg officials he was lining up students to run for City Council. Within a month, the four students announced their candidacies -- reforming the city’s rental regulations was among their top priorities.

With students making up roughly half of the city’s 12,000 residents, the William and Mary candidates said, it is time that segment of the population had a voice.

“Originally, we hoped to have three students elected to the council,” Lowe said this week. “While there is a perception that Williamsburg is a retiring community, the fact is that William and Mary students make up a majority of the population. Every student has a direct stake in our local government. Students should be represented locally.”

While holding press conferences and announcing their candidacies was the easy part, the students soon found that actually getting their names on the election ballot was another story – a compelling drama that is still playing out in Virginia courts.

As of this week, only one of the four students, Forrest, is among the seven City Council candidates certified for the election by Williamsburg Registrar R. Wythe Davis. The fate of two others, Lowe and Alami, remains undecided. Saunders’ campaign appears over.

Travis Luther Lowe ('05) continues to seek the right to run for an open City Council seat in Williamsburg. photo by Tim Jones

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“Everybody should have a place to vote,” Davis said this week. “I would like to get them registered to vote. My mandate is to get them registered to vote in the right place.”

Forrest’s voter registration application was initially rejected but later approved after he dropped out of his classes at the College and moved off campus. Davis said he decided to approve his application because Forrest told him he moved out of housing on campus, had a local job and would no longer be listed as a dependent by his parents’ income taxes.

For the three other students, Davis determined they did not qualify as registered voters in the city -- a critical factor in qualifying as a City Council. The registrar said, among other things, the students did not qualify as city residents because they remained financially dependent on their parents, who live elsewhere.

State election law provides a guide for defining a person’s residency for voting, but it leaves much of the discretion to the local voter registrar to determine if a person is a permanent city resident or not. A look at how other college towns in Virginia address the issue of voter registration doesn’t make the clouded picture any clearer.

In Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech, the registrar asks several questions to determine whether students are on their own. The registrar in Charlottesville allows students at the University of Virginia to register with their dorm addresses. Students at Mary Washington College can not register in Fredericksburg using a campus address.

In Williamsburg, the students were given a questionnaire that Davis says he’s used for years to determine is a student is a city resident or not. Using a guide developed by the State Board of Elections and referring to state code, Davis said, the questionnaire asks a series of questions such as job status, whether their cars are registered in Williamsburg or not, and if their parents list them as dependents on their income-tax returns.

“We’re trying to determine all of these things,” Davis said. “It’s not just for students; it’s for anybody whose residency is in question. We look at it on an individual basis.”

The students say they live in Williamsburg at least nine months of the year and consider the city their permanent home. They have argued that Davis unfairly targeted the students because they announced their intentions to run for City Council, stating the registrar is now using roadblocks to keep students from gaining some control over local politics.

“That’s absolutely not true,” Davis said of the accusations. “The only thing I’m doing differently is making sure we give it to them in writing.”

During his five years as the city’s registrar, Davis said he has used the questionnaire if there was a question about a person’s permanent residency. In years past, Davis said, he would call the applicant and orally ask them the same questions. This year, Davis said, he decided to provide a written questionnaire to all people in question because he expected an influx of student applications and wanted to document the process.

“It’s never been a problem before,” Davis said. “If there is a question of residency, I have to determine domicile.”

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, the three students first took their case to U.S. District Court, asking a federal judge to order an immediate approval of their voter-registration applications so that they could meet the March 2 deadline for candidates to file for the election later this spring. However, the federal judge said he could not overrule the registrar and suggested the students appeal the registrar’s decision to Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court as allowed by state law.

Both Lowe and Alami took their cases to Circuit Court, but Saunders, who was the first to apply to become a registered voter, had missed the 10-day deadline to appeal. That meant his effort to get on the ballot, at least this year, was basically over.

But the fate of his two classmates is still undecided and on March 5, Circuit Court Judge Samuel T. Powell III heard the appeals Lowe and Alami. The judge ruled that Lowe, an Arkansas native and member of the National Guard and William and Mary ROTC, should be allowed to register as a voter and run as a candidate for City Council because his six-year commitment to the National Guard qualified him as a permanent resident. The judge ruled that Alami, whose family lives in Roanoke County, was not a local resident.

Alami has now decided to take her case to the Virginia Supreme Court, which she expects to hear her case sometime later this month. She hopes it comes before April 5 – the deadline for people to register to vote – because she said it would open the door for more students to vote in the upcoming election, a critical component to her campaign.

“I will continue to fight for what I know is true and guaranteed by our constitution,” said Alami, a 20-year-old majoring in sociology and religion. “The cause is bigger than me.”

Ironically, Lowe’s fate still rests with Alami’s efforts in court. Although Judge Powell ruled that Lowe should be registered as of the date of his application, and be allowed to file his petition and candidate’s application, he hit another snag this week.

Three days after Judge Powell’s ruling, Lowe said, he was informed by the city’s registrar’s office that he did not have enough valid signatures to be on the ballot. He was told that only 100 of the 152 signatures on his petition were valid – a candidate needs 125 signatures from people registered to vote in Williamsburg. In addition, the people circulating the petition themselves must be registered to vote, or at least eligible to register to vote. Alami had collected about 25 signatures for Lowe, and since she has not been ruled eligible to vote, those signatures are not considered valid.

Lowe said he plans to appeal the decision, and hopefully get on the ballot. In the meantime, the student vowed to continue what he calls a “grass-roots campaign.”

“I’m going door-to-door and talking to registered voters,” he said. “The majority of people are excited about the prospect of having a student on council. We’re not here just to represent the students; we want to reach out to a community that has lost their voice.”

Read about the students in the Daily Press and Richmond Times Dispatch.