Student Senate hosts special election open forum

The Student Senate hosted its special election open forum on Wednesday to provide candidates a final opportunity to express reasons for running for a position.

“I know there’s a lot of mixed emotions out there about how we got to this process and how we got to this point (…) but I’m excited that students are excited,” said Student Activities Director Evan Welch, who has also assumed the role of election commissioner for the special election. “I think it’s good that — for better or for worse — it has sparked passion in students — whether they’re glad to run because they didn’t know about the last election or whether they’re mad as hell because they don’t think Student Senate knows what they’re doing. Students are fired up, and that is one thing that I have been trying to do through my position, but I didn’t necessarily think that this would have been the call to action for students.”

Welch said the amount of candidates running in the special election is a large improvement in comparison to previous years — the pool of candidates reached 26 students at its highest participation rate. Welch said this year’s special election marked the highest candidate pool in the last four student government elections.

“Students are not knowing one of the most important things on this campus, and that’s elections,” said Dan Beal, a junior communication major, who is a non-traditional student and a presidential candidate in the special election. “This tells me that there’s a communication breakdown somewhere. We have to analyze what’s going on and get the word out to students.”
The revision and standardization of the plus-minus grading system and the increase of communication between Student Senate and the campus community were the main topics addressed by candidates during the open forum.

“I’ve talked to several hundred students over the past couple of months concerning this, and the general consensus is that nobody likes the A-minus,” said Josh Divine, a sophomore mathematics major, who is running for the director of Academic Affairs. “If I’m elected, that’s one of the first things that I’m going to try to get rid of. Director Bradford has been trying to do that so far, and it hasn’t worked.”

Benjamin Schiffelbein, a sophomore political science and philosophy major, who is currently running against Divine for the director of Academic Affairs, said he disagreed.

“I actually enjoy the plus-minus grading system because I think it allows professors to be more exact with their grades,” Schiffelbein said. “If the problem is that I got a 90 percent as opposed to a 93 percent and I get a little less of a score on my GPA, then I think the burden falls on me to maybe spend an extra five minutes studying and 10 minutes doing my paper.”

-- Originally published in The Mirror on April 23, 2010