VSA pushes back spring election dates

Julianne Herts Assistant News Editor

Following changes to the room draw schedule, the Vassar Students Association (VSA) has decided to delay its spring elections until April 30. Consequently, this year’s new VSA Council members, unlike their predecessors, will not take office until after Spring Convocation.

The election dates were moved so that current Davison House residents would be able to run for office in their new dorms. The Office of Residential Life has changed the date of the Davison House draw to April 23 so that the draw will take place after pre-registration for the fall semester. It is only after pre-registration that the Office of Residential Life will know how many rooms in each house are available for Davison students.

“We work on projections,” explained Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa. “How many students will participate in pre-registration really determines how many students will participate in room draw.”

Inoa noted that over 90 percent of students usually participate in pre-registration. If election dates did not move, Davison residents would not be able to run for office in their new houses, since they would not know which house they would live in until after the filing deadline.

The VSA Council passed a resolution concerning the change in election procedure at an emergency meeting at 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 10. The resolution will allow students to file for candidacy from April 21-25 this year, giving Davison residents three days to register to run in their new houses.

Voting will take place from April 30 to May 2. Election results will not be announced until May 4, as the VSA feels that it is best not to make political announcements on Founder’s Day, May 3.

The resolution was recommended to Council by the Board of Elections and the VSA Executive Board on April 9, the day after they found out about the change of house draw time.

The Board of Elections and the Executive Board initially discussed having a split election, wherein house positions and all-campus positions were elected at different times. However, they worried that having multiple elections would affect voter turnout. The fear was that students would only vote in the house elections due to apathy concerning the VSA Executives, or would only vote in the first of the two elections.

There was debate over these concerns at the emergency meeting, and the split election idea was discussed again with all of Council.

Main House President Luis Trujillo ’09 and Noyes House President Marcelo Buitron ’09 recommended that house elections be conducted by a paper ballot vote after all other elections were over. Trujillo suggested that each house president and house advisor count the votes from one of the dorms other than their own.

“The reasoning that we had behind this is that it’s really necessary to elect the new executive board as soon as possible,” explained Trujillo. Lower voter turnout “is a better price to pay than not having a president at Convocation and not having time for the old executives to meet with the new executives.”

VSA Vice President for Student Life Morgan Warners ’08 argued against the proposal made by Buitron and Trujillo, emphasizing the importance of straightforward, fully student-run elections.

“Nine separate paper ballot votes would be a logistical nightmare,” said Warners.

“In terms of relative costs and benefits, I think that it’s much more important that we have valid election results than that we have a longer transition time.”

VSA President Sam Charner ’08 agreed, noting that VSA by-laws forbid those running for office to be involved in ballot counting. Despite some initial debate, the original resolution proposed by the Board of Elections and Executive Board was passed.

Another issue discussed was the room draw priority usually granted to house officers. Because room draw will precede elections this year, house officers will not have priority in selecting their rooms. This fact was met with some disappointment, as many student leaders see room priority as one of the major perks of council election. Several Council members argued that since being a house officer is a difficult job, the students taking on that responsibility deserve their choice of rooms.

Buitron felt differently. “You’re elected to serve the student body, not to serve yourself,” he said.