Article by: Jeff Fish
The Student Government Association (SGA) held its fall elections last week to fill the nine senate seats for the class of 2013 as well as three vacant seats for the class of 2010 and two for 2011.
“I’m really proud that the SGA is close to having a full board for the first time in several years,” said SGA President Brian LeFort, 2010. “I’m excited to see a packed room when I go into a meeting. It gives me a lot of confidence to see how many freshmen wanted to run.”
The SGA also filled its nine freshmen Senate seats last year according to LeFort. “There’s something to be said for the fact that interest and demand were definitely there. Classes coming in want to be involved and have their voices be heard.”
The new Class of 2013 senators are Brielle Frederick Osborne, Samienta Pierre-Vil, Brad Migilacci, Ryan Powell, Martha Alvardo, Evan Sudarski Abadi, Justin Dulak, Jeffeson “Wes” Davis Jr., and Amber Bellon.
“I want to help the SGA make ties with Sodexho and represent each club on campus equally,” said Powell.
Also new to the SGA are Christina Scopa and Ashley McAnerspie (2011) and Sarah Flanagan, Mary Mahoney, and Jim Wilson (2010), former Suffolk Republicans President.
“It was a vote of confidence for common sense,” said Wilson, regarding his election to the SGA.
One seat remains open in the class of 2010 and “We’ll take anyone who’s interested,” said LeFort. A non-voting member of the SGA can become a senator by attending at least three meetings—becoming Member at Large—and then be voted into the position by the rest of the SGA.
There are also nine Senator at Large positions to be filled pending a new piece of legislation that must be passed to increase the number of Senators at Large from four to nine.
The at large positions would represent commuter students, the Sawyer Business School, New England School of Art and Design (NESAD), and one member for Diversity services, like last year. New positions would represent the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), and four members for Diversity Services instead of one. The ninth at large position would be up to the discretion of the SGA in the future.
The amendment was already passed last year, but was lost, forcing the SGA to redraft the bill. “We’ve worked with the authors to get the essence of the bill,” said LeFort, who is hosting a meeting today with the presidents of the various diversity clubs, including the Rainbow Alliance, the Caribbean Student Network (CSN), the Black Student Union, and the Suffolk University Hispanic Association (SUHA) to clarify the language.
According to LeFort, talking to members of diversity services is the last component needed to complete the legislation. “As soon as it’s clarified by the board it’s my goal to have a special election.”
Difficulties in the voting process occurred for some seniors in the fall election because the email they used to vote didn’t match the emails provided by the SGA to SU Connect, a new feature on campus cruiser that links the different clubs and organizations on campus.
The emails didn’t match because seniors have emails made up of the first three letters of their last name and their student ID number, and some of them, who had changed their emails to something simpler, were not recognized by SU Connect because they had all of the student’s original Suffolk emails.
“This was our first time using SU Connect as the venue for holding elections,” said LeFort, “The [voting] problem was fixed Tuesday and as far as I know there were no more problems after that.”
