Macalester College Student Government held elections for next year’s positions and two amendments last Thursday.

The student body elected Michael Barnes ’06 as president and Cara Haberman ’06 as vice president in last Thursday’s elections.

Following the elections, a dispute arose when Haberman was accused of leaving up a poster past midnight on election day. The Election Procedure Committee (EPC), however, decided not to disqualify Haberman, who eventually won the election.

Ben Johnson ’06 was elected chair of the Financial Affairs Committee (FAC) and Aroosa Saeed ’06 was elected chair of the Academic Affairs Committee (AAC). Erin Miller ’05 was elected Program Board (PB) chair in an uncontested race. The position of chair of the Student Services Committee (SSC) was decided in a runoff election yesterday due to the extremely narrow margin between Rebecca Hossain ’05 and Mashal Saif ’07. The results of the runoff were not available at press time.

Aside from the race for SSC chair, the election was not especially close and each candidate won with a clear majority.

The Blue-Green amendment was proposed in two parts, both of which passed. The first part amends MCSG’s mission to include advocating “for the student body’s environmental and social concerns through the practices of student government and Macalester College institutions.” The second part was comprised of ten lines grouped into sections of environmental and social concerns which were voted on separately. The lines address issues such as responsible use of transportation, materials and energy and the promotion of workers’ rights, democracy and freedom.

The other referendum failed. It would have prohibited student organizations that receive money from the student activity fee from using this money at Wal-Mart.

Controversy and confusion

Issues arose Thursday night when a student on the committee responsible for counting votes found one of Haberman’s campaign posters displayed on a bulletin board in the Cultural House. According to MCSG election rules, candidates must take down all of their posters by midnight the night before the election or be disqualified. The student alerted the EPC, which is responsible for ensuring a fair election.

EPC chairs Kristalle Chin ’07 and Casey Birch ’07, in consultation with current MCSG President Simone King ’04, MCSG Vice President Damion Rhudd ’04 and Assistant Dean of Students and MCSG advisor Myra Garnes, decided Thursday night to disqualify Haberman from the election, before they had begun counting votes for vice president.

That night, Haberman sent an e-mail to the EPC formally appealing the decision to disqualify her, explaining that she had not hung the poster in the place where it was found and that she was concerned that someone had moved it without her consent.

According to Chin and Birch, after Haberman’s disqualification, students reported seeing other candidates’ posters and chalkings still up around campus.

The EPC decided to reverse the disqualification, saying they felt it was unreasonable to disqualify so many candidates for minor infractions.

“It was a really tough decision because it’s not just us and it’s not just her. We’re here to ensure a fair election for the student body,” Birch said. “The infraction to us, when weighed against the fact that when we recounted she had won, [was less important than] what the students wanted and that’s what we’re here to ensure.”

Birch and Chin expressed some frustration with the mandate of the EPC. “I think that the EPC should be more than two people because it’s an extremely hard job. I think that it should be an actual elected position with a staff advisor,” Birch said. “And instead of just making a rule, it should meet on individual cases. It’s very hard for us to make the decisions by ourselves.”

The EPC chairs said they had to issue warnings to four candidates during the election for violations like campaigning in the Campus Center.

Birch suggested that the large number of candidates this year—nine ran for president—may have helped to bring the voter turnout up this year. She estimated that 600 to 700 students voted, compared to last year’s turnout of 535 voters.

She said that some students were confused by the new system of IRV, which was added to the MCSG Constitution last spring and was implemented for the first time in this election. With IRV, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. When the votes are tabulated, all the first choice votes are counted first. If no candidate wins a majority, then the candidate receiving the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and his or her votes are redistributed according to voters’ second choices. This process continues until one candidate wins a majority.

Many students failed to list more than one candidate, making their ballots useless after the initial round.

President

This is Barnes’ first foray into MCSG. He has spent the last two years as a staff writer for The Mac Weekly, is active in Habitat for Humanity and is Global Peace and Justice and Public Policy Coordinator at the Community Service Office.

Barnes said one of his major endeavors will be to get MCSG more involved in supporting student projects.

“MCSG is in an awkward position,” he said. “Ninety percent of the activities students are attending are funded by the student activities fee from MCSG, but MCSG isn’t following through on the things that it funds.” Barnes gave the example of WMCN’s recent conflict with Campus Programs over summer broadcasting. He suggested that since MCSG funds WMCN, it could act as an advocate for the radio station in pressuring Campus Programs to let students broadcast their radio shows over the summer.

Barnes also suggested creating a central project fund that could be used for specific proposals that come up throughout the year. He said that MCSG usually has extra funds at the end of the semester that roll over to the next budget, and he suggested finding a creative use for these funds, such as allowing each senior to donate a book to the library in his or her name.

He said that he will also focus on stimulating more student participation in MCSG.

“I want to make it more well known that students [who are not representatives] can be involved in LB [legislative body],” he said.

Barnes said he wants to hold LB meetings outside whenever possible, in hopes that students will be more likely to stop by and watch or participate. The meetings are currently held in the Weyerhaeuser Boardroom and generally few students who are not LB representatives attend.

Barnes addressed the issue that caused the most controversy throughout the campaign—whether MCSG should make political statements—saying that he would support making statements that are relevant to Macalester as long as they are in accordance with a majority of the student body’s views.

“Where is students’ political voice?” he said. “Not local government. It’s the student government at Macalester.”

Vice President

This year, Haberman served on the Program Board, the division of MCSG that plans on-campus events like Springfest.

Haberman said that she hopes to improve the functioning of the LB so that it can better address students’ concerns.

“Most of the old executive board is graduating and Myra Garnes is leaving, so things will be really different next year,” she said, adding that the new executive board would work closely with the graduating officers in the coming weeks to catch up on ongoing projects and formulate plans for next year.

As vice president, Haberman will be in charge of running LB meetings and said she plans to make them more effective by ensuring that they start on time and by facilitating communication between the subcommittees and the entire LB.

She said she aims to make the LB more accessible to students by sending meeting minutes to The Mac Weekly, having a special LB Wall Talk for students to voice concerns and suggestions and by creating an e-mail list to info inform students about what the LB is doing.

FAC Chair

Johnson is currently a member of the FAC and said he looks forward to improving the committee’s efficiency and communication with the LB next year. He said he plans to speed up the process of allocating funds to student organizations, which occurs at the end of each semester and is time-consuming for the FAC and the organizations. He also said he would like to ensure that the LB has more time to discuss financial proposals before voting on them, so that the representatives fully understand the issues.

Program Board Chair

Miller, who was a member of the Program Board this year, said she hopes to develop the larger on-campus events like Welcome Week, Fallfest and Springfest to increase attendance.

“I would like to see us working on the larger-scale events that students will remember when they leave.”

She said she has specific plans to improve Welcome Week activities to attract more upper-class students. She also said she would like to diversify the events at Fallfest and Springfest and bring in more local vendors.

The newly elected AAC chair, Saeed, was unavailable for comment.