The recent case of Steven Lockfield in the ASUO elections requires some action on the part of student government. For those who don’t know, the ASUO Student Senate is composed of 18 senators. There are nine finance senators, elected by the entire student body, and there are nine academic senators, who represent different majors and departments and are elected only by students currently enrolled in these departments.
Lockfield signed up to run for a student senate seat representing the wrong major. He is a history major, but he ran for the seat covering social sciences, when he should have run for the arts and letters seat. The Constitution Court decided that he was unfairly denied the chance to win the seat he should have run for, so they put him on the general election ballot in the right slot.
OK, here’s an idea. Maybe one should check really carefully when signing up to run for student government. It’s good to know which seat covers what major, before you campaign.
The fault doesn’t lie exclusively with Lockfield, however. The Elections Board should be checking to see that student senate candidates are in the right spot. It is the integrity of their election, after all. Apparently the Elections Board doesn’t have a system for this sort of double-checking. They need to.
There was also some question as to whether ASUO elections rules specify that a student needs to run for the senate seat representing their major. A geology student, say, may be eligible to run for the senate seat representing the law school. If that’s the case, the rules need to be changed. What’s the point of having different senate seats for different majors, if anyone can run for any seat?
The Emerald editorial board certainly hopes these changes are made and procedures are put in place to see that this doesn’t happen again. After all, there was a victim here. Ben Lacy ran for the arts and letters seat unopposed in the primary and won. He checked to be sure he was in the right race. But now, despite his win, he has to face another vote, this time with a competitor, and he did nothing wrong.
In the interest of disclosure, we should note that Ben Lacy works for the Emerald. But the point would be the same no matter who was having to run another campaign for a seat that he or she had already won. The point is, it doesn’t seem fair.