If things had turned out differently, the ASUO elections could still be going on, with the 39 general election candidates campaigning for the votes of fewer than 300 students. The ASUO Elections Board withheld the results of the general election, originally slated for release half an hour after voting closed on DuckWeb at 5 p.m. on Thursday, to find a way to allow the 288 international students in the American English Institute to vote.
The result: chaos. Candidates and functionaries clustered outside the ASUO office looking in the window where results are usually posted. Alison Fox, campaign manager for the eventual winner, ASUO President-elect Emma Kallaway, predicted that candidates would “descend on” the AEI if the election was extended to allow its students the ability to vote.
In the end, the results were released the next day without votes from AEI students, whom Elections Coordinator Aaron Tuttle said had never voted in ASUO elections before. Getting them the vote, he and others said, was a project “for next year.” The board considered holding the entire election again, Elections Coordinator Mariah Thompson said.
Concerns over the ability of AEI students to vote were originally raised by Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee at-large member-elect Wenfei Phil Gong. Gong said friends in the AEI complained that they had tried to vote but could not. “I do a little research and I find they pay part of the (incidental) fee, but they cannot vote,” he said.
The AEI was established in 1978 and teaches English to international students who want to pursue a degree in the United States. Its students are not formally accepted to the University, but they do pay tuition and fees.
ASUO governing documents give the right to vote to any “incidental fee paying member of (the ASUO),” and defines members of the ASUO as “all students at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, who have paid the current term or semester student incidental fee.”
Gong said he had, in all, “maybe 10- or 20-something” friends in the AEI who couldn’t vote
AEI students could vote in next election
Daily Emerald
April 21, 2009
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