Raymond Baccari
Editor-in-Chief
Student Community Government is approaching its end-of-year elections quickly, which means the initial filing period is around the corner. However, a part of this process has changed.
The change is that the required number of signatures for students who take out a petition to join SCG is back to 50. During COVID, this number was dropped from 50 to 35 since students weren’t on campus and during the first year back in person student life was very limited.
This proposed change was overwhelmingly approved via a vote during SCG’s most recent parliament meeting. Typically, the process to change this rule is done differently, which SCG Vice President Asley Corrales explained during a post-parliament meeting interview.
“So, essentially what happens is every year the Elections Commission meets with the vice president, who is the chairperson,” Corrales said. “And this year unfortunately we haven’t met just because the commission hasn’t been filled completely as well as there’s been student conflicts with scheduling.”
During the meeting there was a second proposed change that would have resulted in going back to another pre-COVID era policy. This proposal was to go back to having representatives in SCG be major-specific, creating constituencies.
Currently, all members not including the Executive Board are an at-large parliament representative. This change, similar to the reduction in number of signatures needed to join, was implemented during COVID. Members of parliament overwhelmingly voted against this idea, with only five votes in favor of the change. The Elections Commission can change this next school year if they choose to do so.
If the change occurs, students who want to join SCG could then only get signatures from students in their major. The basis used for how many signatures required is 25% of the total number of students in a major, but it would never exceed 50 needed. This means largely-populated majors such as psychology will likely be 50 signatures, while low-populated majors such as geography would just be 25% of however many students are in said major.
The changes that were approved kick in for SCG’s upcoming initial filing period, which begins on March 27 and goes until April 14. This is the time where students interested in joining can take a petition out and collect their 50 signatures. Then from April 11 until April 14 is the declaration period for members who both collected their signatures and want to run for an Executive Board position.
The five positions that will all be up for election to a one-year term are president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, speaker and deputy speaker. Those elections will occur during SCG’s final meeting of the semester, also known as sine die, on April 26.
End-of-year class elections are also occurring during the same time period. Those elections will have a declaration period from April 11 until April 14, with election day being on April 24. Students can cast their ballots electronically via an email form that Corrales will send out.
In other news, SCG President James Torres announced that a 21+ event funded by SCG is in the works.
“We had mentioned last meeting about starting up a 21+ event,” Torres said during the meeting. “So I had an idea of a casino theme, but my friends here talked me into a paint and wine [event] and it’s going to be called ‘SCG Unwined.’”
A date for the event is to be decided.
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