It seems what we have here is a failure to communicate. For the past two weeks, an election debacle has entangled the candidates, Student Senate, the Election Commission and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Tom Stafford into a complicated web of accusations, heavy-handed maneuvering and overreactions. Despite the substantial press coverage and flyers all around campus, the underlying reasons for what has unfolded still are not clear, or at least not presented in a coherent fashion. After combing through Technician articles, reading Student Government documents and searching for data on the University’s Web site, I want to try and give a better understanding of what this whole controversy concerning part-time students is about.
For a long time the Student Government has interpreted the Student Body Constitution and the Student Body Statutes to allow the participation of part-time students (those regularly enrolled students who take less than 12 credit hours) in campus elections. For this election cycle, Stafford informed the Election Commission on March 9 that the administration will now be interpreting the rules to prevent part-time students from voting and running in student elections. The Election Commission, in defiance to the administration’s stance, submitted a ballot deemed improper because it included part-time students. Not surprisingly, the elections were suspended due to the improper ballot.
A lot of talk has circulated about how part-time students are being deprived of their rights. Upon reading the governing documents, however, it is difficult to see how. The second paragraph in the Student Body Constitution states “[A]ll students who are regularly enrolled in the University and who have paid the full student activities fee shall be entitled to vote in the Student Body Elections and to participate in Student Body Government.” Noticing the critical adjective “full” in regard to student fees, I found a breakdown of student fees owed based on the number of credit hours at the University Cashier’s Office Web site. Full-time students currently pay $404.00 for relevant fees. Part-time students pay between $100.75 and $303.00 in relevant fees depending on how many credit hours they take. According to the wording of the Constitution, it follows that because part-time students do not pay the full student fees, they are not entitled to participate in the elections.
The Student Body Statutes, which are the by-laws of the Constitution, explain in more detail the election process and the qualifications for candidacy. The statutes make no reference to whether students are full-time or part-time but instead mandate that the students must be in good standing, which simply means that the student “shall be clear of any academic probation, past or present suspensions, academic integrity probation, or disciplinary probation.” It is incorrect to exploit the lack of specifics in the Student Body Statutes as justification for allowing part-time students to participate in elections because the Student Body Constitution supercedes the statutes in authority.
The referendum that people are talking about involves changing the wording of the Student Body Constitution to allow all fee-paying students to vote and run in student elections – the extent of ‘fees’ intentionally kept variable. So the Student Senate and Election Commission are fighting to allow part-time students to vote in an election that includes a referendum motion that would allow part-time students to vote in elections. When phrased like this, the legitimacy and soundness of this stance is tenuous at best.
After going over all the press coverage that this issue has received, the unanswered question that remains is why Stafford chose this election cycle to enforce the wording of the Constitution. Did Student Affairs just recently become aware of the incorrect interpretation by Student Government concerning who is eligible to participate? Is there a budgetary issue or another more fundamental concern for student representation at work here? And why now?
This controversy reveals to me that the Student Senate and the Election Commission appear to think they wield more power than they really do. They unwisely picked this issue to fight and are lucky to have come out of it with a compromise. Debacles like this cast long shadows over the numerous good deeds that student officials have helped bring to fruition and feed indifference and apathy toward student government.
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