The SGA meeting was full of activity Monday night primarily focused on election law regulating concourse campaigning and off-campus campaigning.
The SGA passed a pair of laws, one which limits campaigns to ten people being able to campaign on each concourse. Another new law which disallows the use of any form of electronic devices to accumulate votes off campus.
The concourse campaigning law was initially tabled due to the lack of clarity that it provided. Agriculture Sen. Emily Stone, said, "Hopefully this makes it a little more clear and better to understand to keep people from finding loopholes and finding ways to beat the system.
The concourse law that was agreed upon by the Senate, states, "At no time shall more than ten campaign supporters be actively campaigning for their candidate in the location designated by the map in the campaign packet."
The goals of this law are to ensure the safety of students, leveling the playing field for greek and non-greek candidates, and making it easier for students to get to their designated location.
SGA Executive Director of Elections, Catherine Millings, said, "The intent of limiting ten people to each campus location was to both reduce overwhelming traffic in already highly populated areas of campus during campaign week."
As stated earlier, SGA checked something else off on their unfinished business list last night. They were able to pass the off-campus campaigning law.
The law states "Students are not permitted to use computers, cell phones, or any other electronic device as a means of directly garnering votes from other students on voting day."
Voting day will take place in February.
The intent of this law is to make a more fair election system overall and protect any student from any legal charges that they may come across by doing off-campus campaigning.
"We felt [off-campus campaigning] was a risk, a risk that this sort of behavior could cause tension between students and the community and a risk to student safety as well," said Milling.
The next SGA meeting will be scheduled to be held Monday, Oct 30 at 7:30 pm in the Student Center Room 2222.
