The Student Association passed a bill Monday that will restrain write-in candidates in future student elections with stricter guidelines.

Parliamentarian James Franco presented to the assembly the official version of the Election and Campaign Reformation Bill, which the assembly voted to pass at Monday night’s meeting in Maxwell Auditorium. The bill focuses on the “moral and ethical parts” of the campaign process, Franco said.

The crucial part of the bill, Franco said, is that write-in candidates will no longer be allowed to set up individual polling stations. Rather than being able to walk around with their laptops and have students vote for them there, for example, write-in candidates will be required to direct students to vote for them through MySlice.

“It’s trying to put some kind of parameters on their campaigns,” Franco said.

The bill does not limit some aspects of running as a non write-in candidate, such as how much money a candidate can spend on their campaign.

If a write-in candidate were to commit five proven violations of the bill, votes for that candidate would no longer count. Franco said SA settled on five violations because votes for a non-write-in candidate also don’t count after the candidate commits a fifth proven violation. Franco said the violations will generally need to be reported to the Board of Elections and Membership.

The assembly also discussed the possibility of changing SA’s name so that it includes the word “government.” External public relations chair Jack McCormack listed “Student Government,” “Student Government Association” and “Student Association Government” as potential name change proposals.

McCormack said the purpose of changing the name would be to make the organization’s role on campus more clear.

“It would just instantly allow our student body to know exactly what it is that we do,” McCormack said. “Because a lot of people don’t know what Student Association is. When you tell them, you basically just say, ‘Oh, we’re the student government.’”

But McCormack said the assembly wouldn’t be able to vote on a proposed name change until April, adding that it would be “at least somewhat of a process.” He said the other option would be to add a tagline to SA’s name, which would be something along the lines of “your official student government,” similar to University Union’s tagline of “the official programming board of Syracuse University.”

In February, the 58th session of SA voted to change the organization’s name to Student Government Association, but then-President Boris Gresely called for reconsideration and, at the next week’s meeting, the assembly revoted and reversed its decision.

If the assembly were to vote to change the name later this academic year, it wouldn’t be SA’s first name change. The organization has had a number of names during its history, including Joint Student Government, Student Government and Student Government Association.

Published on September 21, 2015 at 11:45 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu