On Tuesday, March 23, Student Association Chief Justice Matthew O’Donnell announced a shocking revelation to the Senate: there would need to be a special election on April 8-9 to vote for SA president. Despite the initial election, which was closed on March 12, the need for the special election is due to a historically low turnout, with just 79 votes casted for the candidates, Takayla Beckon and Alanna Hill.
The additional election was declared by the Student Association Judicial Branch. According to Part C, Section 604 of SA bylaws, special elections are administered by the Elections Subcommittee. Part D, Section 607 of the SA bylaws reads that the winning candidate must receive “at least 25% of the votes cast.” This does not mean that 25% of the student body must vote for a given candidate, however O’Donnell believes that the 79-vote election does not adequately represent the student body.
“[The winner] only got 69 votes, something like that,” O’Donnell said. “We don’t want a president who is representative of 8,000 students, that was only voted by 79. So, we just want to make sure that the individual representing the students is able to have the vote of a representative amount of students.”
The winner of this special election will be named the SA president for next academic year, regardless of the amount of votes she receives. While this past election was valid and the winner could have been sworn in, O’Donnell cited moral reasons for asking for a special election, adding to the idea that 79 voters is not a fair representation of the entire student body.
This lack of involvement is not exactly new for the SA election, but it has never gotten to this level. O’Donnell said last year’s election also saw a downtick, citing the start of COVID-19 as the major reason.
“Last year right as we were doing the voting, that was right when Gov. Cuomo announced SUNY schools were shutting down and going to distanced learning,” O’Donnell said. “That one only got [848] students … We kind of let it slide because we had no clue what was going on, but in this case, we’ve had COVID for over a year now, we know how to work around it, so that’s why we want a lot more [votes this year].”
The two years before 2020, the elections saw 1,498 and 1,143 votes cast in the 2019 and 2018 elections, respectively. In both of these, there were two candidates like in 2021 and 2020.
SA Advisor and Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Jerri Howland has also never seen voting drop in such a precipitous manner. Howland has been involved with SA since she was hired by SUNY Oswego in the summer of 2014. She added that she had never seen a special election like this called before for either the president or vice president elections.
While students have learned how to function through COVID-19, it seems as if that has been at least one of the reasons as to why voting was so down this year.
“There’s no doubt COVID had something to do with it because one of our main ways of getting the word out was tabling,” O’Donnell said. “But we have ways to get around it. I think a lot of it might be a lack of getting the word out.”
Howland suggested three potential reasons for the lack of turnout, including a possible lack of advertising due to a virtual format.
“One [reason] is it may be some sort of editorial of how students are feeling about Student Association in general. That might be it, in the sense that they [students] don’t want to participate in the process,” Howland said.
“The second thing could be since we are so remote and students are online all the time, maybe the advertisement for this election just fell short … The third thing is that sometimes people may not be aware of what’s going on for whatever reason. We had students on campus and students that are still taking classes but are not physically here.”
Regardless of the potential excuses or reasons behind the lack of involvement, SUNY Oswego sees this as a pressing issue.
“When [current President] Lizeth [Ortega-Ramirez] got the information, she had to go meet with President Stanley who was deeply concerned with the lack of participation,” O’Donnell said.
Howland does expect SA to bounce back. COVID-19 has plagued SUNY Oswego’s clubs in terms of involvement, but as the school begins to open back up, an increase in participation will follow.
“With this news that 16-year olds and above can receive the vaccine if they so choose, that will move us in the right direction to a traditional type of semester,” Howland said.
Graphic by Patrick Higgins | The Oswegonian
