Eleven new Senators have joined the Senate of the Student Government Association, following two weeks of nominations and campaigning. These 11 — increasing the number of Senators from 15 to 26 — will join the deliberative body of students that oversee over 110 student organizations, manage a $1.7 million budget, and advocate for student issues in and out of Stevens.
With last year’s senior Senators gone, and with no first-year Senators until mid-October, the number of Senators in the Senate was unusually low from the start of the academic year until now. But Madison Gemma, Secretary of the Student Government Association, stressed that the small number of Senators at the start of the year didn’t hinder any progress in the Senate. “Even though it’s a small group, it’s a group of dedicated people,” she said. “They’re productive; they’re getting stuff done. These elections will take responsibility off more people.”
Elections at the start of the academic year tend to target first-year students, as it isn’t until this election that first-year senate seats are filled. But this year, vacancy elections for sophomores, juniors, and seniors were concurrently run. One sophomore and two seniors were among the 11 that joined the Senate.
Eden Luvishis, a newly elected first-year Senator, hopes to move past her high school student government days of “planning dances and ‘spirit days’” to advocating for students.
“I’m interested in joining Academic Rights and working towards allowing language classes to count for humanities,” she added. “I would also like to get all students swipe access into all dorm room buildings, so that we can visit friends across the campus easier. A long term goal of mine is including faculty and administration in our meetings and our agenda to increase accountability and efficiency of the SGA.”
Antonio Cardona, a newly elected first-year Senator, wrote in a statement that he joined to help improve “the participation of the general student body in the Student Government.”
“My biggest goal as a Senator is to attempt to improve the participation of the general student body in the Student Government,” he added. “I want to improve our reach towards all students, so we are able to help them more. Essentially, I want to help the students help us help them.”
Anthony Tesori is a returning Senator, who served before but is back since he isn’t on co-op. He wants to work on academic advancement within the environmental and civil engineering curriculums. He also wants to “make it easier to be a co-op student.”
Unlike elections in the past decade, this year’s election was the first to keep some first-year seats unfilled. Four first-year seats can be filled through vacancy elections over the next few weeks, and Gemma suspects at least two seats can be filled by interested first-year students.
Gemma believes that first-year seats remained unfilled because of a change in nomination and election procedure that happened at the start of the semester. Nominating a student was historically an in-person process, where a student had to print out a nomination form and solicit 50 signatures in their same class year. According to Gemma, the former nomination process was easier. “You could just hand down the form in Pierce.”
The new nomination process required students to retrieve the electronic signatures of any student, regardless of class year. The new procedure also required 75 signatures, rather than 50 signatures. Since the signatures were to be obtained through an electronic form, and since the form could be sent out in mass through group chats and social media outlets, “people thought it would be easier than it really was,” said Gemma.
The Student Government Association will run vacancy elections over the next few weeks to fill remaining open seats. “If someone wants to run but doesn’t know how, they can email me,” Gemma said.
Be First to Comment