Time is running out for students planning to run for one of the 19 open positions in the student government.
The deadline to file for candidacy is 5 p.m. on March 15. After all candidates have filed, there will be a mandatory candidate meeting March 16 at 6 p.m. in the Ben Linder Room in the EMU.
Students interested in getting an initiative on the ballot have until March 16 at 5 p.m. to get the wording approved by the ASUO Constitution Court, gather signatures from 5 percent of students and submit the initiatives to the ASUO, Elections Coordinator Dante Vivanco said.
Last week, the Constitution Court approved the wording of an initiative submitted by Steve Johnson, facility manager for the Student Recreation Center. The measure asks whether students would support transferring funding of the rec center from the incidental fee to a new institutional fee that would be overseen by a reconfigured Student Recreation Center Advisory Board.
Vivanco said he knows of at least one other measure currently being reviewed by the Court.
The court also approved an initiative written by ASUO presidential candidate Jonathan Rosenberg that would charge the ASUO with creating a textbook exchange program.
Although no new candidates have filed since last week, Vivanco said he expects a flood of applications Wednesday and Thursday.
There was “a lot more going on” at this point in the elections cycle last year, Vivanco said, because last year there was only one “slate” (in which a group of candidates for various positions run on one platform), but this year there are three.
Vivanco said he thinks candidates running on a slate might wait to file in order to give their opponents less time to plan a campaign.
Nick Schultz, a candidate for Programs Finance Committee Seat 3, said he is not running on a slate because he feels individual candidates are more accountable to students. Schultz said if he won while running on a slate, he would feel that he owed his election more to the presidential candidate than to the student voters.
Schultz wanted to run for the PFC seat because he said the current group has “not lived up to its expectations or obligations.”
A business minor who has not worked in the ASUO, Schultz said he is an average student who works and can bring his outside life experience to the position.
“I could bring a new perspective and a new life into the ASUO.”
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