SGA discusses various topics

The Student Government Association members conducted their weekly meeting Thursday with no mention of the disputed president position or the five tied senate seats resulting from last week’s elections.

SGA presidential candidate Rusty Kuciemba filed a formal complaint to the Judicial Review Board on April 16 alleging Sara Khalifa, one of his opponents, received an unfair campaign advantage.

Kuciemba complained that University administration members allowed Khalifa to use an administrator’s e-mail account to send a campaign message to student organizations and advisers through GetConnected, violating the bylaws of the SGA Constitution.

The Judicial Review Board members also are deliberating the outcomes of five senate seats that are tied.

The College of Arts and Sciences has one tied position while both the College of Business and Technology and the College of Engineering and Technology have two tied positions.

Parliamentarian Rene Hernandez made a motion to follow the policies pertaining to special elections outlined in the bylaws, which were approved by the general assembly members on April 13.

The senate members voted to pass the motion.

Officers’ reports covered a wide range of topics including, health care, an SGA brochure, dead days and an exit strategy.

President Amy Whitehouse said University officials are planning an emergency exit strategy for the University to be implemented next year.

Whitehouse recommended members view the A&M Dorm Fire video posted on YouTube to see how other universities are handling emergency situations.

Vice president Sara Khalifa said she is writing a proposal to send to Dr. Peter Fos, provost and vice president for academic affairs, concerning the implementation of dead days, the days without classes before finals’ week.

Khalifa has been researching the dead days of other universities and is using that information to propose a comparable policy for the University.

Secretary David Kelley said he is almost finished creating an informational brochure about SGA to be handed out to interested students.

Treasurer Andrew Barnson said the Student Health Clinic is planning to be open during the summer.

However, students must enter the clinic through the community entrance, not the student entrance.

Barnson said the doctors also plan to stay open during lunchtime in order to accommodate students’ schedules.

Parliamentarian Hernandez also spoke briefly about the elections, but only regarding using Blackboard for voting.

This is the first time students had the option of voting online.

“It doesn’t seem we had a significantly larger turnout by using Blackboard, and it took about four more hours to count votes,” Hernandez said.

He said SGA members decided to use online voting in order to reach more voters and to make the process more convenient for the student body.

Information technology department members assisted SGA with setting up an online voting process through Blackboard, a learning management system designed for use as an online classroom, said Scott Dillingham, Blackboard administrator.

“Mr. Scott Dillingham worked with us very thoroughly to get the system up and running,” Hernandez said. “There were some issues with the lists provided to us from the office of the registrar that we used to populate the groups on Blackboard, but we were able to work through them.

Dillingham said online voting is a secure option.

“Voting is treated like an online exam,” Dillingham said. “Once it is submitted, your attempt closes. In order to vote twice, the first would have to be erased.”

Dillingham said he met with SGA members to inform them how the system works, but Information Technology had nothing to do with counting ballots.

“It’s similar to saying we printed the ballot, they distributed it,” Dillingham said.

Hernandez said the online voting process might be used again.

“Blackboard was a success,” Hernandez said. “As to whether or not the software will be reused, I cannot say. That will be up to the next executive board.”