SEC aims to build better organized, more active campus

Boston University’s Student Elections Commission plans to improve their campaign cycle by addressing issues from the spring 2012 race, particularly technologies and student involvement, officials said.

“This year, we’re really trying hard to up the ante — not to bash SEC in the past,” said Tess McNamara, SEC co-chair. “Past members definitely put in a lot of effort. Unfortunately, it didn’t always come out the way they intended due to a lot of last-minute changes.”

McNamara, a School of Education sophomore, said informing students about the election is crucial. SEC is using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to engage students.

“If students can’t make it to the debates, they can submit questions via social media, and we’ll tweet the answers and put them all over our Facebook page as well,” she said. “We want students to be really active.”

SEC is using resources within the Dean of Students office to spread awareness, McNamara said.

“[Katherine] Cornetta controls the computer monitors around campus, so she helped us put our flyers on the public computer terminals in [College of Arts and Sciences] and in Warren [Towers] to help spread the word about our information sessions,” she said.

SEC received criticism in April for its handling of the spring Student Union elections. The Be Unleashed slate won unopposed with less than 10 percent of students voting.

SEC is working with AdClub to help inform students of the SEC’s new methods, McNamara said.

“Everyone knows SG, but we’re afraid that when people hear SEC, they don’t actually associate it with elections so people don’t know our role,” she said. “Therefore we work with AdClub to not only make elections more public but also to make SEC a little more public so that it gives it a little more weight.”

McNamara said SEC is holding information sessions, debates and meet-and-greets in more public locations than CAS classrooms, where they were held in the spring.

“We have one info session in a classroom this year, but we held the others at the Howard Thurman Center and BU Central, places which carry a lot more credibility and have more foot traffic,” McNamara said. “We’re also thinking of holding the debates outside, in the [George Sherman Union] or near the dining halls so people are forced to walk straight into it and get engaged.”

McNamara said new leadership in SEC will also help the election run smoothly.

“We have a lot of new faces this year, which is really exciting,” she said. “For example, Maryanne [Nicolo] and Katie [Siverts] have teamed up this year as our marketing commissioners. We involved more people in marketing to really publicize everything well.”

SEC also added School of Management freshman Bhakti Varma as Interior Communication Commissioner, McNamara said.

“Bhakti’s role is to be the one who is constantly helping with the logistics of things, like keeping up with dates and deadlines and working with [Student Activities Office] on voting procedures,” she said.

SG set an emergency meeting for Tuesday with SEC to discuss plans for the election after SEC members were unable to attend SG’s Oct. 1 meeting.

SG Public Relations Director Cherice Hunt said SG has heard of SEC’s changes, but intends to discuss them at the meeting.

“We have heard about SEC’s changes in leadership and tactics, we’ve seen the flyers and their presence on social media,” Hunt, a College of Communication junior, said. “But SG won’t know what direction SEC is headed until Tuesday’s meeting.”

Hunt said she hopes SEC successfully involves the student population in the election.

“Expectations must be met, and we will call SEC out on those concerns because we feel it is very important that the student body is adequately represented,” she said. “Our ultimate goal is to empower the students. Therefore we expect SEC to promote elections to the best of their abilities.”