Boston University Student Government passed a motion at Monday night’s meeting to hold a special election in November for executive board positions for the spring semester.
The motion, which passed with a 25-to-4 vote, decided that students voted into the executive board in November will serve an abbreviated six-month term from January to May. The election timeline will then revert to the academic-year system where executive board members serve from May to May.
“We were contacted after our last Senate meeting by a number of stakeholders who expressed concern,” said Aditya Rudra, executive vice president of SG.
No specific date in November has been set.
SG voted Oct. 15 not to reinstate an amendment on their election cycle since it had been found unconstitutional. The amendment, which passed in February, had changed the election timeline to a calendar-year system.
Rudra said the Dean of Students Office was concerned with the possible repercussion of the election timeline change.
“No one had said anything, but that doesn’t change the principle of the matter, which is that what we would be doing, what the effects may be, may be misinterpreted or may set a poor precedent for the future,” Rudra, a School of Management junior, said.
Rudra said the current executive board was elected for only the fall semester.
“When we were elected this semester we were elected only for this semester because the understanding was that we have a different election timeline,” he said.
Rudra said that if the Senate voted to not hold a special election, he personally would have to step down and run again on principle.
“There is no way that we, in good conscience, could continue to serve for another semester [without a special election], for it could set a precedent where every [executive] board could change the election timeline and extend their own term,” Rudra said.
Rudra proposed during Monday’s meeting that the Senate keep the constitution as it stands, recognizing an academic-year election timeline and having SG hold a special election in November to determine who will serve during the spring 2013 semester.
As part of that process, Rudra said he recommends the candidate application deadline be extended.
Student Election Commissions co-chairs Tess McNamara and Kerry Ford, both School of Education sophomores, attended Monday’s meeting.
The application deadline for candidates would be moved to Oct. 29, Ford said, the latest possible day for a deadline.
Ford said two of 22 interested candidates submitted the proper paperwork to be eligible to run.
“We’d like to definitely contact the people who went to info sessions and didn’t send in their paperwork, reach out to them first because that’s the easiest,we know they’re interested,” Ford said.
Ford said the SEC plans to send out an email to the whole student body, to advertise as much as possible and to reach out to Residence Hall Association governments to get as many people interested as possible.
“Given the circumstances, we’ll do as much as we can,” McNamara said.
Sophia Woyda, SG vice president of internal affairs, said she has confidence the SEC will do the best they can.
“I think in the past two months they have worked so incredibly hard and built their organization from the ground and they’ve done a fantastic job,” Woyda, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said.
Christopher Addis, SG director of outreach and a CAS junior, said he was glad SG can move forward and get back to work helping the community.
“It’s always appropriate that the governing body represents the will of the people,” he said. “I’m just excited to move forward and put this behind us.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
