Candidate applications for Student Government positions closed Monday evening, yielding a low number of applicants after ten days of filing. Positions including student body treasurer, student body chief justice and Union Activities Board president only received one application each. Student Senate seats also lack significant filing competition.
Four pairs filed for the joint student body president and vice president ticket, and three students filled out forms to run for Student Senate president. No candidates filed for the Student Centers board of directors, and only one filed for a position on the Student Media board of directors.
Only 25 candidates had filed as of Friday, so a majority of the intent to run files were submitted on Monday. A total of 61 intent to run forms were submitted, a drop from the 75 forms that were submitted last year, according to the Board of Elections.
Student Senate President Mitchell Moravec, a fourth-year studying psychology and materials science and engineering, has been a part of Student Senate for four years and ran both of his Senate races for a seat in the College of Engineering and College of Humanities and Social Sciences uncontested.
“I was definitely shocked when we saw it on Friday at the low number,” Moravec said. “But I know with any application, you get them all at the last second because people just kind of wait until the last moment. If we do have a lot of vacancies, the Senate president becomes a very important position because they appoint those people and they set up a process for that, so they’ll need to move very quickly to fill up Senate again if there are openings.”
No applications were filed for Senate seats in the College of Design or the College of Natural Resources. Only one intent to run form was filed in the Poole College of Management, and only two applicants filed for the College of Science seats. A total of 21 vacant Senate seats are left in all of the colleges combined.
“The Senate president by constitution has the power to appoint new senators with confirmation of the current Senate,” Moravec said. “Each Senate president has done a slightly different process. We’re actually looking at the appointments process in general in the current Senate; Senator Simpson is kind of cheering that committee discussion to see if our rules make sense about that, if there’s a better way.”
There are no rules regulating deadlines for seats to be filed, which Moravec says makes for an inopportune situation for trying to representatively accomplish tasks in Senate. Moravec’s last day as Student Senate president will be March 28, which will be the day the new senators are inducted.
In last year’s spring elections, only Senate seats for Graduate and Lifelong Education remained vacant. Student body treasurer, student chief justice and the Union Activities Board president races were contested as well last year.
Board of Elections member Lee Daniel, a second-year studying microbiology, assists in overseeing and updating finance sheets submitted by candidates during campaigning.
“We’re just trying to make sure that we’re creating a level playing field in how we’re promoting things,” Daniel said. “So one of the strategies that we’re doing is creating one central voting page, such that we don’t have individual candidates each making their own voting page.”
According to Daniel, this will ensure that election information will reach those outside of candidates’ immediate circles and allow Student Government to share the page because it’s unbiased.
Moravec also discussed how Senate will continue throughout the election cycle.
“I’ve always kind of seen a lull in activity during elections because they are either out campaigning or they’re really worried about the upcoming election,” Moravec said. “I’m really trying to fight against that narrative. I’d really like to keep working; we still have things to do, and we still have mandatory things about awards and our budget and spring appropriations is still important for student [organizations].”
All-candidates meetings will be held this Wednesday and Thursday to go over rules and regulations regarding campaign and election logistics for candidates. Campaigning for the election will begin this Friday.
