The Collegian

Issue date: 9/18/07 Section: Opinion

The system is at it again. The Associated Students of Saint Mary's College (ASSMC) have once again given me the utmost confidence in their ability to govern us…yeah, like that would actually happen.

Did you vote in the general election held last week? If you didn't, I would not be surprised. The only reason I knew there was an election was because I happen to pay extreme attention to what ASSMC does.

I also knew that my senior class had three open positions for which to vote. We are short a vice president and two senators. Nobody ran for the vacant positions, but then there should be a write-in possibility, shouldn't there? The ASSMC Bylaws agree with that statement as well.

In Section 103.02 of the Bylaws it states, "in a race with no recognized candidate, a write-in candidate must attain the vote total threshold of one-half the number of votes garnered by the candidate with the greatest vote total in the respective class."

But what of a race with no candidates at all? I should have been afforded the opportunity to vote for somebody. It is the democratic way. As I went to vote on SMCNet this past week, I was met with the message, "You have entered the wrong ballot. Please go to the Student site for your assigned ballot." How did I enter the wrong ballot when I did not program the system that houses the elections? A number of seniors had this very problem. So what of those empty positions? We did not elect anybody to them so they should remain open, I would assume.

The class of 2010 ran into similar problems. They, too, had an empty senator position. Upon entering the ballot, the sophomore class was met with this message, "If you have more credits that the peer group you are in and want to vote for that group, please exit this ballot and contact Legacy Lee." The page also had a quadratic formula explode on it. "Warning: implode() [function.implode] : Bad arguments."

There are a few things wrong with this picture. First, why is Legacy Lee still the contact when he left the College in June? Second, why can't SMCNet write programming correctly?

It should be the responsibility of ASSMC to rerun the elections for the sophomore and senior classes. That there were no candidates for the election is irrelevant to this case. The classes of 2008 and 2010 should be allowed to vote for whomever they want, even if there is no candidate. The possibility of someone actually winning the election is slim, but that still does not mean it is not possible.

Also, that call to Legacy Lee usually is to tell the one student who calls to come into Lee's ASSMC office and hand in his or her vote. That's all fine but what of the other 600 members of the student class? How are they to get this information?

For a system that has so many flaws, it should not be the students who make changes but the elected student officials.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools