By Cari Griggs, Staff Writer
Freshman-at-large seat elections for Student Government Association’s Student Senate are this week. The deadline to file for candidacy was midnight Sept. 9. This year seven freshmen filed to run for the two available openings.
Students can vote for their two candidates of choice from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday outside the cafeteria in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center.
Tables will have laptops for students to vote on via the ‘involved’ website, okcu.edu/involved, a new way of voting since the last elections, said Justin DaMetz, SGA vice president of Student Senate.
It also is possible for students to vote from their personal computers through the ‘involved’ website, but only freshmen may vote in the election, DaMetz said.
Student Senate is a branch of the Student Government Association responsible for proposing and voting on legislation. The two types of legislation the Senate creates are appropriations and resolutions, DaMetz said.
Appropriations deal with allocating student activity fees to different student organizations based upon needs and requests. Resolutions are bills that involve the will of the Senate and create action, DaMetz said.
An example of a resolution Student Senate proposed in the past was to create more recycling options on campus, DaMetz said.
The elected freshmen have the same responsibilities as other senators, which include attending meetings, proposing and voting on legislation, and sitting on standing committees, DaMetz said.
“The freshmen-at-large senators are essentially the voice of the freshmen body, especially for those students who aren’t in an organization,” he said.
The election is important in the long-term even though freshmen only will have the office for this year, DaMetz said.
“The students elected will be representing the students for the next four years,” he said. “If you look at our leaders now, like (SGA President) John Riesenberg, these are students that got involved early on.”
Other open Senate seats include nursing, graduate-at-large, and graduate/law-at-large. Riesenberg will appoint the students for those seats and then the senators must confirm his selections.
Click here to see candidate profiles.
Check back Friday for election results.
