The student senate canceled its fall election, which were to be held the week of Sept. 13, because too few students applied to run by the deadline.
The senate will interview the eight candidates who applied on time and appoint six by Friday into the positions left vacant by the departure of senators elected in the spring.
The senate opted to appoint new senators as opposed to holding an election because there weren’t enough candidates to have a fairly contested election, said senate Chairwoman Alie Parker. The group’s constitution allows them to choose senators without holding an election in certain circumstances.
In the wake of the decision, the Student Government Association is mulling how to handle future fall elections. Chris O’Connor, assistant dean of student life, said the SGA is putting together “an ad-hoc committee to look at elections overall.” He also said he has assigned a graduate assistant to help senators rethink their election process.
The committee will include members of the Leadership Development Board — which oversees elections — and student senators, said Parker.
The committee hasn’t met yet, but Parker said they are considering appointing senators to vacant positions each fall as opposed to holding elections.
“In my knowledge, they’ve never had a very successful fall election,” she said.
The cancellation of the election is a blessing in disguise since it allows the senate to take a hard look at how they’re reaching out to students, she said.
Historically, fall was never a good time for the student senate.
Elections held in the spring generally get all the glory. That’s where students choose their senators and student body president. It’s a pretty big deal, as far as campus politics go.
But come September, some senators have a change of heart. They realize the time commitment they’ve taken on and some decide to quit senate. Some just never show up to a meeting.
The Student Government Association thought they found a solution in 2008 by holding fall elections to replace those who quit senate over the summer — or never showed up — and also to draw in new students who had just started at USM. But the elections so far have drawn only a fraction of the turnout in spring. In fall of 2008 — the only year for which there was data available — only 255 students voted in the election.
“The problem is, if you’re just looking at voter turnout, if you don’t have student body president elections and you don’t have a referendum election, where is the student investment in voting?” said O’Connor. “For the past two years, in fall elections, voter turnout has been extremely low.”
The student senate is in charge of doling out roughly $500,000 a year in student activity fees to campus groups and their support staff. They also lobby the administration of student concerns.
Last semester, a referendum question that asked whether students wanted more or fewer online classes helped draw 681 students, one of the highest turnouts in recent years.
“The [student body president] elections fire people up,” said Ashley Willems-Phaneuf, who was elected to the position last spring. But once people are elected, they “tend to change their plans,” she said. “People join senate and then life changes. The goals they had at the end of the year don’t always match the goals they have at the beginning of the next year.”
Getting students interested in campus politics at a school where most students are commuters and few spend extracurricular hours on campus has traditionally been difficult. But according to Willems-Phaneuf, senators also need to reach out more to students.
“Within senate you can do really good work, and never be seen by the students,” she said. “If you’re not out there with the students, they don’t know you.”
But often the work done in committee is the work that really matters, she said. You can’t get a whole lot done just by mingling with your constituents.
“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” she added. “If you out there with the students, you’re not doing the work that makes you most effective.”
The applicants for the senate positions are:
- Safa Al-Qayyar, freshman, biology
- Marshall Archer, senior, social work
- Rizwah Khan, sophomore, finance
- Zachary Chase, senior, political science/classical humanities
- Samantha Skillings, sophomore, criminology
- Chris Camire, freshman, undeclared
- Alex Bresler, senior, economics