April 21 , 2006

“The Student Body Officer Elections: A Mess in Every Direction”

By JASON E. WEBER
weberj@marietta.edu

On Friday, April 7, 2006, the last ballot was cast in this year’s controversial Student Body Officer Elections. The elections were set to appoint the successors to the three highest ranking student positions at Marietta College. Unfortunately, the election was far from flawless, and shortly after the ballots were counted an “issue” arose. I sought to find the nature of this issue, why it was so secretive, and what was being done about it.

What Happened and What Went Wrong?

Each year the Student Senate’s Judicial Board is charged with the duty of arranging and running the Officer Elections for the next academic year’s Student Senate. They gain this responsibility from the Student Body Bylaws Article V, Section C, where it states, “The Senate Judicial Board shall be responsible for establishing procedures and committees appropriate for conducting all elections with the following restrictions.” The trouble with this election began in the beginning when Judicial Chair Brian Ashton resigned to run for Vice President. Senate needed a Judicial Chair to run elections.

President Mike Joliat and Secretary Megs Schrek took over in his place. The Student Body Constitution says “The new members of the board shall be appointed by the Student Senate by a majority vote.” However according to Senate Treasurer Ashley Wollam there was no nomination or approval of this appointment. At this point, The elections scheduled for April 5-7, are already unconstitutional. Yet we continue forward.

Election packets instructing the candidates of the campaign rules were delayed in coming out shortening the amount of time all of the candidates had to campaign. This violated Student Body Bylaws Article V, Section C.1.a, “Candidate packets, requiring the appropriate number of signatures, shall be made available two weeks before elections are held.” Joliat said that they were available online, but Wollam informed me that those packets were not updated and were still up there from last year.

After campaigning was over and before polling began, all advertisements were required to be removed. This rule was found on the packets themselves. The Student Body Bylaws says in Article V, Section C.1.b, “A complete list of the official regulations for the elections shall be attached to each candidate packet.” This establishes the packets as binding; a decision that President Joliat informed me was upheld two years ago when two candidates were disqualified because their posters were not taken down before elections began.

This is where controversy with this election began. Following the counting of the ballots, Ashley Wollam filed a complaint with Senate stating that one of the candidates had violated the rules for campaigning. Specifically they allegedly defamed other candidates and violated the rule regarding advertising. Senate convened in an emergency session on Sunday, April 9, 2006 to discuss the issue.

Upon convening, they read the complaint aloud in open session asked the accused, the accuser, and all interested by-standers to leave and went into executive session. Executive session according to Robert’s Rules of Order is “any meeting of a deliberative assembly, or portion of a meeting, at which proceedings are secret.” They discussed the issue for roughly two and a half hours at the end of which they determined that a reelection should be held.

They met again the next evening to discuss the reelection, but were confronted with another issue. At President Joliat’s and Former Judicial Chair Ashton’s request Senator Cate Weber called a point of order on their decision to hold a reelection on the basis that they did not have enough time to hold the election and give the potential candidates enough time to receive and complete the candidate packets, an issue that, as I mentioned, was violated in this past election anyway.

The problem with this is that it was not a point of order. A point of order deals with issues of order, for example breeches of Robert’s Rules of Order. This was a question of constitution and bylaws that should have been taken up with Judicial Board who according to the Article IV, Section 3.e.2 of the Student Body Constitution, “have jurisdiction over cases involving violations of the Student Body Constitution.”

Instead, President Joliat accepted the point of order and ruled that there wasn’t enough time to hold the elections. He then, according to Treasurer Wollam, decided have Judicial Board rule on the issue. At this time, Joliat stepped down as Judicial Chair saying that he did not feel that it would be ethical for him to rule on this issue. At that time a new Judicial Board was appointed by Senate and they convened on Tuesday.

During their meeting, they ruled that none of the rules or bylaws that I have mentioned thus far were broken and that this election was completely constitutional.
They pronounced Lauren Thomson, President-elect.

The Unconstitutionality of Senate: Accident or Tradition?

I discussed these issues with President-elect Thompson on Sunday, and she had an interesting insight to share. She said that the problems with Senate and the mistakes that they make are products of simple failures to follow the Constitution that occurred in the past that now have snowballed into major issues.

I feel that this is essentially the problem with the Student Senate. Through-out my time at Marietta College, I have seen Senate constantly neglect their rules using the ends to justify the means. I would argue that Senate needs to stop tiptoeing around the rules and follow the Constitution and Bylaws that were approved by the entire Student Body and past Senates. I am certain that those who wrote the current draft of the
Student Body Constitution did not do so without thinking about what they were doing, and I am more than certain that they did not go through the trouble of getting two-thirds of the Student Body to approve it to have it be ignored.

I talked with Ashley Wollam, former Senator and current Student Body Treasurer about Senate’s lack of commitment in regards to the Constitution and Bylaws. “All too often senate does this.” He said, “This is another situation where it is incredibly simple to follow the rules.”

In my view, the rules are simple to follow. All the activities of the organization are outlined in detail. For example if this election were to have followed the rules, President Joliat would never have been Judicial Board Chair, and when the issue of the poster came up, the legitimate Judicial Board would have ruled that the rules are clear about posters and disqualified the candidate in question. There would have been no issue, and no one could object to that reasoning.

Even President Joliat recognizes the lack of constitutionality of Senate. I asked him if he was aware of that acting as President and Judicial Chair was unconstitutional. He told me he was. He also explained to me that on many issues there is a precedent of breaking the rules, and it is not the precedent, but the rules that need changing.

We are at the point where we need to give the Constitution a chance. Writing it off as ineffective because it prevents us from doing things the way we’ve always done them is an insult to those who worked so hard to write the document in the first place.

The Future: Asking More or More of the Same?

On a much lighter side, President-elect Thompson seems optimistic that Senate can be helped. In our interview she told me many of the initiatives that she advocates such as developing a communication strategy that works, increasing student interest, and taking one long look at the Constitution and Bylaws. She told me that she plans on taking time this summer to sit down with the documents and discover what they are actually about and find why things haven’t been working.

What really will affect Senate’s progress, however, are not Thompson’s initiatives, but a desire from the Student Body to have a Student Government that has actual credibility. The Student Body as a whole has to get interested in Senate, realize that it is their voice to administration, and in some cases criticize any actions it may take that aren’t representing their wishes as constituents.

At the same time, Senate needs to learn to remember their constituents and act accordingly. This includes appropriating money to legitimate clubs that support the lives of students, operating as a strong voice to administration on all issues concerning the college, and most importantly acting as an ear and relaying all matters and initiatives to their constituents in any and all ways possible. Treasurer Ashley Wollam told us that contacting is “the most important part of your job” as a Student Senator.

Right now Senate is in a major rut. The legitimacy of this election is an issue that will not, nor should not, go away. However, Senate can’t so much look back, but instead look forward, peruse the constitution, and stop themselves before things get any worse. President-elect Thompson gave me much hope when she told me that she plans to revamp the way Senate works. I can only hope that that spirit will embody all of Senate and result in an organization that is fully legitimate and has nothing to hide, and I wish to be joined by hundreds of fellow students who do their part by participating in their Student Government.