In a late-night reversal Monday, the Student Elections Commission revoked an earlier vote from Monday afternoon that would have extended the deadline for candidates to register in college and Student Union races until 5 p.m. on Friday in hopes of giving more students a chance to run for office.
Instead, Monday’s final deadline stands, meaning one slate of candidates for Union’s president, vice president and treasurer positions is registered to run unopposed and without a candidate for secretary. The reversal came late Monday as the SEC, the organization in charge of running elections, realized they would violate their own rules by extending the deadline.
“We had a rules chair to make sure that what we did was acceptable,” said SEC Chairman and College of Arts and Sciences senior Jeff Maynard. “We had to issue a reversal due to the fact that if we don’t follow our own code, how can we ask our candidates to?”
Boston University College of Communication senior and SEC marketing representative Justin Breton said the reversal corrects an SEC mistake.
“It really falls on us,” Breton said. “We really dropped the ball.”
SEC officials had announced at Union’s General Assembly meeting at 8 p.m. Monday night, attended by about 30 students and meeting quorum by two, that they had voted to give students until the end of the week to register for candidacy in the upcoming elections after two slates of the three slates didn’t register before Monday’s deadline.
By 11 p.m., the SEC had recognized and reversed their decision in a move that Union President and CAS and School of Management senior James Sappenfield called “inconsistent.”
“I agree with the rules being followed but I think it’s kind of a travesty that the SEC came to the General Assembly, told the General Assembly they were going to extend the deadlines, then reversed their decisions,” Sappenfield said. “I’m concerned with the state of the elections.”
Sappenfield said though he appreciates SEC’s compliance with their own rules, he believes their insufficient advertising of the deadline led to a situation where no candidates ran for one of the executive positions.
Union plans to fill the secretary position with someone who will win a write-in campaign and be approved as eligible, or if no one can be found, with someone appointed by next year’s General Assembly, which Sappenfield said has never happened before to his knowledge.
The issue of not finding enough candidates to run for executive office next semester comes on the heels of an amendment Union passed earlier this semester to grant the SEC independence in running elections. Sappenfield said the SEC has not performed as promised so far and the amendment should perhaps not be repealed but “reexamined.”
“I think the SEC has definitely fallen through over the past few weeks,” Sappenfield said.
But Maynard blamed student disinterest in the process for the failure to turn out candidates, not marketing, even after the SEC ran into problems with getting the website up and running and pushed the registration to Monday from two days before to compensate.
“We didn’t feel we should start to market without having our website up,” Maynard said. “I do feel that this had some impact but minimal. We talked to fraternities, we talked to sororities and Union itself. There was too much apathy, no one showed any vigor in wanting to run.”
Maynard said at the meeting his main concern with the deadline extension was to give the students options to choose from in order to improve Union.
“In the fairness of trying to make sure the student body has an actual voice, we’ve extended the deadline to try to get a more competitive election going on so that students have choices,” Maynard said before the reversal.
Union Senator and College of Arts and Sciences senior Anant Shukla said he is ambivalent about the reversal after initial support for the extension at the meeting.
“It’s kind of neutral,” he said. “I understand the reason why it was reversed because the SEC has laid down certain rules and regulations. It’s tough to tell candidates to abide by certain rules and regulations when the SEC can’t abide by its own rules and regulations.”
Maynard and Breton also outlined initiatives the SEC hopes to implement in the elections this year, including referendum questions for students to answer on the ballot about topics that could include gender-neutral housing, Greek housing or tuition.
“It gives the Student Union an idea of what students are actually concerned about and it puts a number on it,” Breton said.
Maynard said it aims to give something tangible from students for Union to use in discussion with administrators.
“It’s geared towards actually giving the student body a voice and then Union can take that voice to the administrators when they’re negotiating things,” he said.
Also at the Union meeting, the GA voted to approve a $1,400 budget proposal to go to upcoming events, T-shirts and other expenses and Shukla announced that he has received approval for registration reform including the implementation of an automatic waitlist for classes next year, which he intends to discuss in the next GA.
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