Thirty-five students began campaigning for seats on Macalester College Student Government’s (MCSG) Legislative Body (LB) last Friday amid concerns from several candidates over representation and campaign policies. Elections will be held Tues. Sept. 28.

The deadline for filing for the election passed last Friday night. According to MCSG President Michael Barnes ’06, 34 candidates filed, competing for a total of 28 seats. Since then, three students have declared their intention to run as a write-in candidate and one student has dropped out of the race.

Barnes expressed concern that some of the candidates who had filed would no longer be eligible to run for a seat due to their failure to attend a mandatory Election Procedures Committee (EPC) meeting. No further information on this matter was available as of press time.

Fifteen students are running together on what they call the Common Platform (CP). CP, according to the group’s statement, is united in its support of four tenets: maintaining need-blind admissions, encouraging institutional responsibility, increasing domestic diversity on campus and creating a gender-blind campus housing option. The student running as a write-in candidate has also endorsed the Common Platform.

Barnes said he was concerned that very few juniors and seniors had filed to run. As of the filing deadline, no candidates had filed to represent natural science majors or fine arts majors or students residing in George Draper Dayton Hall, potentially leaving five seats on the LB unfilled. He said that he would encourage students to run as write in candidates.

Despite his concerns, Barnes said that he was confident in the arrangements made for this year’s elections. He said that there will be approximately sixty students per representative.

“These are probably the best and most accurate distributions we’ve had in years,” Barnes said.

LB representation for first and second year students is based on the residence hall in which those students live. Representation for juniors and seniors is divided along major lines into six core groups: languages, humanities, social sciences I (Political Science and Economics), Social Sciences II (Anthropology, Geography, Sociology, Psychology and Urban Studies), Natural Sciences, and Fine Arts. One member of the LB is designated to represent transfer students.

Jesse Mortenson ‘05, who is running to represent the Social Sciences II majors, however, takes issue with this structure. Mortenson said that basing representation for juniors and seniors on their majors of choice is “mostly arbitrary.”

“This would be like replacing U.S. Senators to represent ‘Lawyers’ in one district versus ‘Certified Public Accountants’ in another district,” he said.

Most candidates, however, said that they were content with the current representation.

Paul Swartz ’08, one of seven candidates competing for the four Dupre Hall seats, had a positive view of the process.

“I’m not worried about winning or losing,” he said. “I’m excited about the idea [of running].”

Students will also vote Tuesday on a proposal that, if approved, would grant voting rights in the LB to the Program Board chair, an elected official who serves on the Executive Board. Erin Miller ’05 currently occupies the position.

According to MCSG Vice President Cara Haberman, the Program Board is only in its third year of existence. The discussion about granting its chair LB voting rights arose last year. Haberman said that at the first meeting of the newly elected Executive Board with the former LB last spring, a resolution passed to include the proposal on Tuesday's ballot.

According to election guidelines, candidates must conclude their campaigns by midnight on Sept. 27th in preparation for the elections the following day, preventing candidates from engaging in any last-minute get-out-the-vote efforts.

Barnes said that this guideline causes the election to seem “anti-climactic” and suggested that this year’s LB take on the issue in its deliberations.

“Imagine a presidential election where Election Day is silent,” he said.

There was some controversy in last year’s MCSG executive election over this issue when a student accused MCSG Vice President Cara Haberman ’06, then campaigning for the office which she currently holds, of leaving a poster up past the midnight deadline. Last year’s EPC chairs first disqualified Haberman, then repealed their decision after other candidates’ posters and chalkings were also found around campus after the deadline.

Neither Tobias Pforr ’06 nor Dorothe Singer ’06, the EPC chairs, were available for comment on this issue. However, they indicated earlier in an email that consequences for breaking any election guideline “will be determined…in consultation with Assistant Dean of Students Jim Hoppe. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.”