The Student Media Board of Directors met in Witherspoon Tuesday night with the goal of electing 2011-2012 student media leaders. Representatives from Agromeck, Wolf TV, WKNC, the Technician, the Nubian Message, Windhover, and the Student Media business office were in attendance.
However, except for the Technician editor-in-chief, the advisory boards were only able to announce their recommendations for Student Media leaders. No leaders were formally elected.
The board did not have quorum, a rule of order which stipulates that a majority of the board’s voting members must be in attendance in order to make elections official.
The board must have seven voting members present, four of which must be students, according to Paul McCauley, chair of the Student Media Board of Directors and a graduate teaching assistant. A total of six members were present: three students and three professionals, leaving the board short one student member.
Two of the missing student members were reported to have notified the board of their impending absences. The board recognized one student member as being out of the country.
Bradley Wilson, coordinator of the student publications office, was in attendance. He stressed the importance of the attendance of student members and urged student members with voting privileges who showed up to the meeting to push their counterparts to attend.
“This is really important to us. We are devoting our lives to [Student Media]. We need [voting members] here,” Wilson said.
The board will have to meet again to reach quorum. But, at the meeting, the group had two options in when it could meet again. It could have waited until April for its next scheduled meeting, or organized a special meeting to be held sometime before April. The board chose to try to meet in two weeks.
The Technician editor-in-chief was not announced because it is a “highly visible position,” according to McCauley. The decision not to announce the board’s recommendation for editor-in-chief was ultimately left to McCauley.
Current Technician Editor-in-Chief Amanda Wilkins, a junior in horticultural science, said she agreed with McCauley’s reasoning for not making the announcement.
The Student Media Board of Directors must formally elect leaders before current leaders can begin to train them in their upcoming positions. The new editor-in-chief of Technicianwill take office at the beginning of May, and the longer the board takes to formally elect the new chief, the harder it will be for him or her to start out well, according to Wilkins.
All Student Media positions change leaders at the beginning of May, except for WKNC which changes April 1.
“Given the position of the editor-in-chief on-campus, it would have been a really tough situation of knowing who the recommended person was and not being able to act on that recommendation,” Wilkins said.
Wilkins said she had little time to prepare for her position when she took office as editor-in-chief in May 2010, which put her at a disadvantage.
According to Wilkins, she is frustrated that the board did not announce its recommendation for her successor, but that she did not blame the board.
“It was the people who didn’t come today that didn’t make quorum that made this position difficult,” Wilkins said. “We had the potential to choose [all of the student leaders] tonight, and for people to move forward with training.”