The Dialectic Senate proudly carries on the tradition of Society-father James Mebane, who presided over the first student organization at the University of North Carolina and the second student organization at any American university. The Dialectic Society has always stood as UNC’s symbol of student extracurricular achievement. The ideals of virtus and scientia and the current Dialectic President, Kathryn Haenni, guide the Society as it continually strives to better itself and the university. Below is a list of active Dialectic Senators. The Dialectic Constitution may be viewed here.
Valerie Calvo, President Emerita
Senior | Physics and English
Joined: October 15th, 2018
“When people talk, listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.”
– Ernest Hemingway
Deniz Erdal, President Pro Tempore
Junior | Contemporary European Studies and Information Science
Joined: September 27, 2021
“Ed Markey’s desk was thrown out into the hall by the statehouse bosses… Markey’s bill is now the law.”
– Ed Markey for Congress Campaign Ad
Jasmine Werry, Senator
Junior | Philosophy and Chemistry
Joined: October 18, 2021
“Without signs there is no ideology.”
– Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov
Logan Grodsky, Senator
Junior | Business Administration and Public Policy
Joined: October 18, 2021
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Ladder of St. Augustine
Nathaniel Shue, Joint Senate President
Junior | Public Policy and Political Science
Joined: November 8, 2021
“I thought you knew this already.’”
– Dar Williams
Maddux Vernon, Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa
Junior | Political Science and Peace, War, & Defense
Joined: November 15, 2021
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
– Ivan Turgenev
Matthew Tweden, Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium
Junior | Public Policy and Peace, War, & Defense
Joined: November 17, 2021
“The higher our standards, the greater our progress, the more we can do for the world.”
– President J. Calvin Coolidge
Erica Boey Yyng Shan, Senator
Senior | Advertising & PR and Political Science
Joined: November 17, 2021
“Ditch your boyfriend and date me, I’ll be your best Boey.”
Anna Crist, Critic
Junior | Biology and English
Joined: February 28th, 2022
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
– Jane Austen
Bruce McRae, Senator
Junior | Philosophy
Joined: April 2oth, 2022
“Fun things are fun.”
– Hirasawa Yui
Conor Buchanan, Senator
Sophomore | Peace, War, & Defense
Joined: October 3rd, 2022
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!”
– Adam Savage
Sophie van Duin, Senator
Junior | Peace, War, & Defense and Hispanic Literatures & Cultures
Joined: October 10th, 2022
“We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.”
– Erin Morgenstern, the Night Circus
Daniel Gallagher, Senator
Junior | History
Joined: October 17th, 2022
““Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste ná Béarla clíste.”
– Anonymous
Rania Alaoui, Clerk
Sophomore | Philosophy and History
Joined: October 24th, 2022
“And since I can sever myself neither from the objectivity that crushes me, nor from the subjectivity that exiles me; and since I am neither permitted to evolve into Being, nor to succumb to nothingness, I must listen; I must look around myself now more than ever, at the world; my fellow; my brother.“
– Jean-Luc Godard
Senator Ellis
Senior | German Literature
Joined: October 24th, 2022
“Doubt grows with knowledge.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nicole Belcher, Senator
Junior | History and Communication
Joined: November 7th, 2022
“Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived.”
– Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Gabby Garner, Senator
Junior | Psychology and Neuroscience
Joined: November 7th, 2022
“I’m feeling such an odd mixture of pride and mortal terror.”
– Aliki Theofilopoulos
Cormac Lynch, Senator
Junior | Economics
Joined: November 14th, 2022
“What is important is not to see but to understand.”
– Inscribed on the tombstone of a blind girl at Lourdes, brought there seeking the miracle of sight
Dean Pearce, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Kazakhstan; the Collective Security Treaty Organization; the Commonwealth of Independent States; the Economic Cooperation Organization; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; the Eurasian Economic Community; the Organization of Turkic States; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
Junior | Biology and Chemistry
Joined: November 16th, 2022
“Mental illness is not funny.”
– Phillip K. Dick, VALIS
Ashley Dowdney, Sergeant-at-Arms
Sophomore| Classics and Peace, War, and Defense
Joined: February 27th, 2023
“Ne te quaesiveris extra.”
– Persius Satire 1.7, Epigraph to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
Christopher McClanahan, Senator
Sophomore | Computer Science
Joined: February 27th, 2023
“Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Neil Sharma, Senator
Senior | Public Policy and Japanese
Joined: April 10th, 2023
“If you don’t believe in yourself, believe in the me that believes in you!”
-The Great Kamina
Addie Rockoff, Senator
First-Year | Global Studies and Judaic Studies
Joined: October 9th, 2023
“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
– Milan Kundera
Tolu Osungbesan, Senator
First-Year | Economics and Public Policy
Joined: October 16th, 2023
“Don’t try to act like someone else… be secure with yourself.”
– Frank Ocean’s Mom
Kathryn Haenni, Di President
Junior | English and Comparative Literature
Joined: October 16th, 2023
“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.”
– Don Miguel Ruiz
Katie Fiore, Senator
First-Year | History and Public Policy
Joined: October 23rd, 2023
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Gabriel Walsh, Senator
First-Year | Political Science and Public Policy
Joined: November 6th, 2023
“That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”
– Abraham Lincoln
