If Professor Jim Jones has his way this November, his students next year may find themselves in the unique situation of appealing to the mayor?s office if they are unsatisfied with their grades.Jones, a professor in West Chester?s history department, is running for Mayor of West Chester in the currently uncontested Democratic primary that will be held in May. In November, he hopes to displace the Republican incumbent, Mayor Dick Yoder.
“I?ve been doing community service in one form or another for seven years now. I?ve learned a lot about the borough, and I feel that I have something to offer,” Jones told The Quad when asked why he has decided to run. He points to his membership in the Town Gown Council and his involvement with the Borough Council to support this statement. According to the biography that Jones has given to The Quad, he has been extremely active in community affairs in his thirteen years living in West Chester. Most notably, he was appointed by the Borough Council to serve as the director of the West Chester Public Library from 1998 to 2001 and was then appointed to serve as secretary of the Borough?s Planning Commission from 2001 to 2004. Jones claims that neither the University nor its students will need to worry about his mayoral duties affecting his responsibilities at the school. He told The Quad that the job, while important, is a part-time occupation.
The pay, at $2,000 a year, is minimal, and the majority of the departments in the borough are directed by the Borough Council. Jones says that while, if elected, he may be forced to rearrange his priorities in terms of community involvement, his dedication to the University and students will remain unwavering.
This will only be an issue, of course, if Jones can perform the seemingly daunting task of defeating the current incumbent, Yoder, in the November election. Though a Republican in a decidedly Democratic borough, Yoder can lay claim to strong ties to both the area and the University.
A former University professor himself, the mayor retired from the Kinesiology Department in 2000 after thirty-eight years of service. He has lived in West Chester his entire life which, includes his time as an undergraduate at what was then called West Chester State Teachers College. His relationship with the University dates back to the fifties.
Yoder stated that he will run an aggressive, bipartisan campaign for the upcoming election. He says he will stand by the record he has established over the past four years, and feels confident that the voters of the borough will recognize the job that he has done.
Despite the apparent difficulty involved in defeating such an entrenched incumbent, Jones says he is looking forward to the opportunity of showing voters why he should be their next mayor in the upcoming months.