Senate elections need credibility

By Editorial

During Associated Students elections last spring, a record 30 percent of students came out to vote. And while they chose our president, vice president and senate chair, there might as well have been 30 students in total voting for senators.

In fact, it didn't matter who students voted for in the senate races, because, essentially, there were no senate races. Every senator who ran for office in every class was unopposed, causing the record turnout to amount to nearly nothing.

Only seven students ran for 15 class senator positions, and yet AS has had no problem filling the vacant seats. All they had to do was appoint students to the senator positions through an application and interview process, run by Anton Zanotto, the senate chair.

Now, even more senators are being appointed. The Santa Clara reported last week that after three senators resigned this year, there are only 4 in the senate who were actually elected.

This is a big problem for AS.

With every new senate appointment, with every new e-mail telling students they can apply to be on senate, our government's credibility diminishes. If only seven people are actually running for senate, the message is clear that there is no reason for going through the hassle of elections. Why bother with signatures and campaigning when you can just do an interview instead?

AS Vice President Julia Niles said in an interview last week, "If ... people are going around (elections), that's not right."

The purpose of a government is to be a representative of its constituents -- the student body. But without students having a say in who should represent them, the makeup of AS is determined by its leaders.

Last week, Zanotto said in an interview there were five students who applied for the two sophomore senate positions vacated by the resignations of Scarlette McKenzie and Crystalyn Hoffman. And while we believe that Zanotto is capable of making good decisions to fill those positions, it is impossible for him to know what the entire sophomore class wants in its senators.

We hope that Zanotto questioned Catherine Hurley and Megan Incorvaia, the new appointments, carefully as to why they didn't run in the spring, when students would have been able to decide which of the five applicants would best represent the sophomore class.

Sophomore senator Peter Lo, one of the four senators who was elected, said he ran an "anti-Peter Lo" campaign in the spring. Why did he do so? Because he could.

Our electoral process has diminished so greatly that elections are now a show, where soon-to-be senators parade through the path to being elected.

Fortunately, there is hope. Yesterday, there were eight freshmen candidates who ran for five seats -- a real election. Last year, there were nine candidates running for freshmen positions.

Clearly, freshmen are interested in being a part of AS when they first come to campus. What AS President Jenny Moody and Niles need to figure out is how to keep these first year students involved, so they are willing to run again after their freshman year.

One solution is to stop allowing senators to circumvent the electoral process. Perhaps it's time to change the constitution so open positions don't give students the chance to apply for a job to represent students.

In the spring, a record number of students voted, nearly 300 percent more than the pervious year.

But that work is wasted without candidates to vote on. This year, Moody and Niles need to work to ensure there are senate races, and they must plug the hole that allows senators to dismantle our electoral process by applying for the senate instead.