Student Government’s (SG) election timeline has been indefinitely postponed after the Senator Debate was canceled. After the news broke last week, Spinnaker reached out to Deputy Elections Commissioner Alex Iannantuono to discover what this means for the future of the Fall election and SG. Iannantuono was joined by SG Branch Advisor Victoria Shore and SG Communications Director Bailey Bernard. 

Originally, the election was contested with two political parties with 22 students running for the 20 open Senate seats. After withdrawals, the number of candidates dropped below 21 resulting in an uncontested election.

When candidates become Senators, party affiliation becomes null and void. The two-party affiliations created for the Fall election, Unity and Soar, will come together to prioritize students. 

“Once they become Senators, we drop parties. The job is to be a voice of the student and you don’t do that with parties. You do that with finding out what the student needs, and that’s their big mandate,” SG Branch Advisor Shore commented. 

19 Senate seats are set to be filled, leaving one open seat. The remaining seat, along with other seats, will be open for Senate appointment. Any interested students can go through an application process to fill open Senate seats for the upcoming semester. 

Iannantuono clarified: “For Fall elections, it’s really not that common to have contested elections. Nineteen people is still a really good thing to have. We’re going to be filling a lot of seats, and it’s still possible for people to become Senators through appointment throughout the semester so that seat can be filled.”

Typically, more students run for Senate during the Spring semester because the Presidential election reaches more students who may be interested in running. Moving forward, Iannantuono hopes to increase election advertisements and awareness to maximize student involvement in SG. 

“I feel like for this semester we kind of didn’t have a lot of time to advertise as much as we wanted to, so that’s something we’re looking to change for the Spring… to give us more time, in the beginning, to get the word out to students that they can run in the election,” he explained. 

Interest has always been a difficult area of improvement for SG, who faced similar issues in the past during the Fall 2020 election. Current attendance, while not booming, at least remains above the weak 25% capacity SG sported just one year ago.

Iannantuono said that he was “looking forward” to the Spring semester and remains hopeful that a contested election is on the horizon.  This will be one way for “more students to get into Student Government and share their perspectives,” he closed.

The remainder of the election timeline was also canceled. Candidates will be validated at the Senate meeting on Oct. 22. At the following meeting on Nov. 5, these aspiring Senators will be sworn in. These new Senators will start right away to gain experience in preparation for the Spring semester.

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