Continuing with this week’s topic, changes in the Student Body Elections ‘10, tonight I talk about changes in the time line for the election.
This is the most obvious change of all. Last year I was elected on February 27th for the following academic year and began formally running the week after returning from winter break. This is much to early because it engulfs all of student government in the elections process and brings the real work of helping students largely to a halt. Pushing elections back until after Spring Break provide several benefits.
- It will allow more work to be accomplished within student government during second semester.
- Candidates will have had two more months to establish themselves as viable for the positions they seek.
- Campaigning will be in warmer weather. (As opposed to -17 F from last year’s start to campaigning)
Later elections also mean a compacted transition period, but a month is plenty of time to accomplish this. All in all, this should have been changed years ago.
Two weeks ago Student Senate passed new guidelines for this year’s student body elections. This week I am going to post in a three part series on the changes to these guidelines for the student body elections next semester. In each post I will write about one of three major changes to the rules. These changes are:
- Reduction of the spending caps
- Change in the time line
- Creation of the President/Vice-President “ticket”
Today’s topic is the reduction in spending caps. This year the caps have been reduced to $2000 for the President & Vice President “ticket” with an additional $800 for the candidates for Vice President of Student Organizations & Vice President of Campus Activities ($500 each if they join a “ticket”). This change is largely ceremonial, but still important. Last year’s caps for each candidate was raised to $1500 from $500. The idea was to raise the caps high enough that no one would be able to reach the ceiling. To understand this logic we must first look at how the Elections Committee holds candidates to a cap. In years past the caps for individual candidates were between $300-$500.
Adam, Thad, and Mallory look at our hard work after a day of banner making for my VP of Student Organizations campaign in spring 2008.
However, it was widely known that most candidates overspent these amounts by double or triple because Elections Committee could not accurately assess how much a candidate had spent. Thus by increasing the caps, honest reporting was encouraged. Still, large spending caps do is create mental barriers for candidates of low economic status who at first glance cannot afford to spend $1500 on a campaign. Elections Committee must work with candidates who struggle financially to help them understand how they can effectively campaign without breaking the bank.
In the end, I don’t believe that money can buy an election at Miami. I was elected last year with the highest margin of victory ever for a president, but I spent only a little over $800 to elect 3 candidates. Anyone who has run in an election knows that hard work and relationships are a candidate’s most valuable assets and $1500 cannot buy these.
This semester ASG passed legislation appropriating money for Brailsford & Dunlavey (B & D), an independent student life assessment firm, to survey the student body to assess student opinion and priorities in regards to financing for a new student center. After months of work with the with B & D we are ready to launch the survey this next week.
In preparation for the survey, ASG has been working to inform students of the benefits and costs of a new student center so that students are informed when making their decisions. Below is a letter to the editor of The Miami Student that I submitted for this Friday’s edition of the paper.
I look forward to seeing the results of the survey and will share them with you here once they are available.
“As many of you know, plans for the Bicentennial Student Center are continuing to be developed this year. The building consists largely of group study space, student organizations offices, meeting rooms, new dining options and programming spaces. These benefits to our campus will be paid for from two sources: donations and student fees, the ratio of which is still to be determined.
Current plans call for the building to be opened in 2014 and at that time students at Miami will begin to pay additional student fees in order to support the construction and continued operation of the building very similar to those that we pay for the operation of the Rec Center and Goggin Ice Arena. However, this date is not set in stone and depends largely on aforementioned ratio. Read more…
