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SGA elections undergo changes

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By Jackie Roberts

Staff Writer

From coast to coast, millions of Americans flood to voting booths on Election Day. Though our numbers here at St. Bonaventure do not quite reach that of the national elections, we do take our Student Government Association (SGA) elections seriously. So seriously, in fact, the election process has been updated for the current SGA installment.

Collaborative efforts of assistant director of the Career and Professional Readiness Center Angie Wolfe, Vice Provost of Student Life Rick Trietley and SGA Leadership allowed for changes to be made in the elections. The changes encourage voters to gain a greater knowledge of each candidate.

Essentially, the changes made are Internet-based. The CPRC provides candidates the opportunity to post on an online interview stream. The candidate’s platform is videotaped and then represented by a QR code on posters for that specific candidate. Voters can scan the code on the poster and instantly watch the candidate announce his or her platform on smartphones or online.

“A proposal was brought forth to the SGA senators regarding changes from a standard passive campaign medium – signatures, posters – to a more active campaign process,”Angie Wolfe, assistant director of the Career and Professional Readiness Center, said. “This process was voted upon and approved as an amendment to the university’s current SGA constitution.”

The updates in the election process were possible due to a mixture of ideas.

“The change involves a combination of both active and passive programming that further legitimizes the election process and allows constituents to know about the candidate and what they represent,” Wolfe said.

Third-time SGA candidate Katie Kaiser, a sophomore journalism and mass communication major, agreed with Wolfe that the updated election gives voters an opportunity to understand candidates on a deeper level.

“It weeds out the people who just run for the fun of it,” Kaiser said. “Now students can see they have to put more effort into running for a position.”

However, she feels the application may not be used to its full effect.

“I am not sure that students have actually taken the time to watch the interview video that the candidates have made so I am not sure if it has helped much,” Kaiser said.

Nonetheless, Bona’s students have an advantage that was never before possible for SGA elections on campus.

“Student voters can now have direct access to the candidate and his or her platform,” Wolfe said. “This will tell them more about the qualifications of the candidate than was known in the past – the position they are running for, the qualifications they bring to that position, what changes they will make if elected and also their understanding of the role of that position within the university.”

Cody Clifford, SGA executive board president, also agrees that the Internet-based updates are beneficial to the students.

“The changes benefit the students because they now can actually see what people plan on doing if they are elected,” Clifford, a junior marketing major, said. “This is important because SGA is the official voice of the student body, and the more we communicate with the campus the easier it is for us to do so.”

The online interview stream for candidates is an advancement St. Bonaventure hopes to keep a part of the election process for years to come.

“This is obviously the first year that we have done this, but it is something that we are hoping to continue in the future,” Clifford said. “By us pairing with the CPRC, it really is helping SGA strive to become more professional as well as being more streamline with the campus as a whole.”

Students can place their ballots for the upcoming SGA elections online when they log into their my.sbu accounts. The CPRC and SGA encourage students to take advantage of the candidate’s videotaped platforms before voting.

robertjk12@bonaventure.edu

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