Three constitutional amendments and half the seats in SU Senate and Treasury will be up for a campus-wide online vote. Elections will take place from Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 8 a.m. until Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 5 p.m.

“In comparison to past years, these are the most highly competitive and contested elections we’ve seen,” junior Mamatha Challa, vice president of administration for SU, said. “I think it’s exciting because it gives the student body the opportunity to choose who they want to be in office rather than just confirm people…it actually makes incumbents responsible for their past decisions.”

There are 17 students are running for 10 open Treasury positions, and 20 students running for 14 open Senate seats. Last year, 20 people ran for 19 open Treasury positions, and 14 for 13 Senate seats.

The three constitutional amendments being placed on the ballots include one to remove mentions of a nonexistent equipment committee from the constitution, another to reassign the role of advising to the Diversity Affairs Council to the Vice President of Administration and a third one to decrease Senate size—which will take place over future election cycles.

Challa added that beyond the number of petitions received, she was also pleased with the diversity of students who are running for SU this year.

“I think that we did a really great job this year recruiting a more diverse array of students than we normally do. One thing that I am excited for is having more female candidates for Senate, as well as some non-business school students running for Treasury. We also managed to recruit a high number of freshmen to run,” she said.

Sophomore Greg Porter noted that the increased interest in this year’s elections is pushing candidates to vie more fiercely for their seats.

“I think it will actually make people campaign more and try to get people who aren’t actually their friends [to] vote for them,” Porter said. “People are going to have to try harder and campaign harder…as opposed to just using popularity.”

Candidates have been drawing chalk advertisements across the South 40 and campus, posting flyers around campus, forming Facebook groups and talking to individual constituents.

Freshman Michael Byrne and junior Kai Zhang both dressed in formal attire and walked around the DUC to promote their campaigns for Senate.

Byrne, currently filling an open seat in Senate, said he hopes to use the position to promote school pride.

“I plan to use the coalitions I’ve built in the Senate to work on a range of issues—from fostering school spirit and tradition by emphasizing our alma mater song to improving the admissions process by incorporating student input,” he said.

Zhang, who is running for re-election, said he hopes to continue his projects already under way and start working on new initiatives, including building international recognition for the school.

“I [have] started to work closely with [Vice] Chancellor Baker…who is in charge of the library service. We have achieved and are doing a lot of things together, like [redesigning] the new illumination system of Whispers Café, decreasing of the login time of public computers in [the] library, computer lock projects, etc. We are now working very hard on the reliability of the printing system,” he said. “I can see my effort finally turns into result.”

Challa said that she generally appreciates students with the experience and initiative to take advantage of the positions they are applying for.

“I value candidates who have tangible ideas for improving the quality of life on campus, as well as candidates who have strong connections to the Wash. U. community and are willing to go out of their way to find out what the student body wants,” she said. “I also really value candidates who have experience actually being involved in student groups and a perspective of student life outside of Student Union.”

With additional reporting by Michael Tabb

Amendment 1—Remove the equipment committee

This amendment resolves to remove the equipment committee from SU’s Constitution. While removing a committee would generally seem like a big deal, Student Life recommends voting “yes” for this amendment. Why? Because the equipment committee does not even exist.

The equipment committee came into existence in the spring of 2009, and its purpose was to manage equipment operated by student groups. The committee would take inventory of all equipment the student groups owned, and it would facilitate the sharing of this equipment. However, Student Union found this committee useless, and it is thus now defunct. The Student Group Activities Committee (SGAC) now performs the function of the former equipment committee. The SU constitution should not have language authorizing a committee that no longer exists, and that’s why we support this amendment.

Amendment 2—Change the overseer of the Diversity Affairs Council (DAC)

The goal of this amendment is to officially make the vice president of administration the new advisor of the DAC. The council, since its existence, has officially run under the vice president of programming but has recently been working with the vice president of administration.

The DAC came into existence in response to the Mother’s bar incident two years ago, when several black students on the senior class trip were refused entry to a bar in Chicago, allegedly based on their race.

At the time it seemed appropriate to have the DAC exist under the vice president of programming, because they were tasked with coordinating the programming that resulted from this event.

In the past several years, however, without a huge amount of diversity-based programming, the DAC has become less of a presence on campus, and the group has been working mostly with the vice president of administration.

We support this amendment. We believe that the DAC should be directly under the position it works most directly with, but the group should take this move with a grain of salt. We think the DAC should be a larger campus presence, and it needs to do more as a part of SU, even if it is not focusing on programming.

Amendment 3—Reduce the size of Student Union Senate from 28 seats to 22.

We believe that this amendment deserves a yes vote from every student. Reducing the size of Senate by 6 seats will make the process of becoming a senator much more competitive and results-oriented, rather than allowing it to continue as a simple shoo-in election every term.

People against the amendment believe that fewer senators will result in fewer projects completed—projects, such as Syllabi Central, that have been started by senators. However, we believe this fear is unfounded. Senators do not need their titles to enact change on campus, and if they are voted out, they can still participate in their projects.

The benefits of changing the size of Senate in order to make it more effective and competitive outweigh the potential costs of fewer people involved in the process, so this amendment deserves a yes vote.

Thirteen students applied last week for the one open spot in SU Treasury, and 12 applied for the two open Arts & Sciences seats in SU Senate.

Speaker of the Senate Dan Robinson, a senior, hopes the high level of interest will create momentum going into the fall SU elections.

He hopes to extend student interest in SU through to the fall election cycle.

“If we can translate this interest to fall elections, we’ll have fall elections that are much more competitive than usual,” Robinson said. “The election commission is working to get the word out…to make sure those are as competitive as possible.”

This is the third year in a row that SU Senate has begun the year with six empty Senate seats, despite continued focus on retention and recruitment.

Robinson said that two of the senate seats opened up when former senators took on SU leadership roles; three were due to members’ time constraints; one—one of the two business school seats—was never actually filled in the first place.

“The final one was an administrative mistake on our part. We didn’t fill enough business seats. There wasn’t a second person running, but one should have been appointed immediately,” he said.

According to Robinson, the applicants are primarily freshmen, but a number of sophomores also applied for the vacated seats.

Most of the seats being appointed, including all of the Arts & Sciences seats, will be put to a vote in the SU elections this November.

Senators are typically voted into office in general student body elections, and school councils appoint students to fill spots that become vacant throughout the year. But between spring and fall, when school councils are transitioning, spots are often left open.

While the Business and Engineering School Councils are conducting their own interviewing process, Robinson said that the Arts & Sciences School Council asked him to fill their two seats.

Robinson will be filling the seats after interviews. He says his decisions will be based on the applicants’ interests and interpersonal skills.

“I’m looking for someone that comes in with the right mindset—who comes in really ready to make changes, but someone who’s also willing to work as part of a larger group,” he said.

Robinson also said that at least five of the six open Senate seats should be filled within the next two weeks. The art school and architecture school, he said, may take a few more weeks to fill seats.

Architecture School Council President Sean Dula, a sophomore, is looking for anyone interested in the position.

“The school is just so small,” Robinson said. “I’m confident they’ll find someone; it just may take a little longer.”

While Robinson could potentially fill the architecture seat with one of the numerous applicants from Arts & Sciences, he said that it would undermine the Senate’s balance.

“The reason why we have the school seats is to give the smaller schools a voice,” Robinson said.

Speaker of the Treasury Julian Nicks, a junior, said the increased student interest in SU Treasury is a pleasant change.

“It was nice to see such interest,” Nicks said. “It made it a difficult decision, but I’d much rather have it be a difficult decision than be self-selecting.”

Students outside of SU are ambivalent about the process.

“I feel like it should be a democratic process,” sophomore Elizabeth Crowell said. “I’m sure there are many pros and cons to the situation.”

Others are comfortable with the measure as long as it’s only temporary.

“I think that’s fine as long as there’s still elections,” junior Amy Cole said.

Still, Robinson said that the empty seats have not had a significant effect on the body’s ability to carry out its function.

“As speaker for a number of weeks now, I wouldn’t say that our ability to do our work has been hampered by this at all,” he said. “It’s definitely not unprecedented.”

Contested elections are such a rarity at Washington University that when they do come around, it’s refreshing.

Last year’s Student Union Executive elections were uncontested, and while that does not diminish the qualifications of the candidates, it does detract from the important on-campus issues that student government takes care of.

For SU Treasury (the group that is allocating $92,350 to bring Al Gore to campus), most seats are uncontested during each election cycle, ensuring that the same representatives spend our student activities fees every year, even after approving Bristol Palin.

We would like to congratulate the freshman class on its early involvement and we hope that it continues this high level of engagement going forward.

The rest of the student body can learn from the freshmen’s example. Contested elections are good. They get us thinking about important on-campus issues, and they get us legitimately concerned about who represents us to the administration. We could do with more contested elections, and it shouldn’t be up to the freshman class to make sure they actually happen.

Contested elections improve SU’s reputation among the rest of the student body. The more people compete, the more people recognize just how important SU is, and the more people are willing to pay attention, and maybe get involved in student government.

Contested elections improve the overall quality of representation, helping us get representatives who want the job, and who have legitimate campaign promises and goals, rather than the people who discovered that they could easily win an election.

That isn’t to say that all SU representatives are not doing a good job. We just believe that the school would be considerably better off if more students were involved in the election process and we had legitimate competitions over representation.

This is something that falls on the entire student body. We need more people to run, but we also need more people to vote in SU elections.

Increasing an interest in being involved on this campus will take a while, so we don’t necessarily anticipate the status quo changing very soon. To the freshmen: Keep doing what you are doing. If you continue challenging each other for student government positions (and don’t simply give up once you aren’t on Freshman Class Council), by the time you are seniors, the culture will have completely changed.

We need to have a campus that is more involved in student government, and a process of contested elections will help that. Good job, freshmen. Now to the rest of us, let’s try to follow in their footsteps.

The majority of the candidates are coming from outside SU. The influx of candidates has made this spring’s elections much more competitive than normal.

New candidates were motivated by their dissatisfaction with SU. Incumbents want to continue what they started.

Candidates are particularly focused on increasing communication between SU and students.

Seventeen students are running for 13 SU Senate positions, and 13 are running for nine seats on SU Treasury.

In the fall, there was only one contested Treasury seat, an open Arts & Sciences Senate seat and two other contested seats.

Although the election commissioner, sophomore Sarah Rubin, said the Palin controversy wasn’t the only motivation for the increase in candidates in this spring’s elections, she added that people have realized what SU can do.

“People realize that Treasury can do all these things, and usually I don’t think people pay that much attention to who gets funded,” Rubin said. “When students see how their money can be spent, and if they’re very against it or very pleased with it, they see how much power and how much change SU representatives can bring.”

That sense of power motivated the candidates.

“The reason I first became interested in Treasury was because of the Bristol Palin fiasco,” sophomore Treasury candidate Aron Lurie said. “I thought that it was a waste of money because it was going toward marketing for the event instead of going toward someone who would provide good discussion.”

Many candidates noted that the problem is greater than just the one SU decision and stems from an overall lack of communication between SU and the student body.

“I think that the issue is bigger than just Bristol Palin; I think there needs to be more communication about how people want money to be spent,” said freshman Leigha Empson, who is running for SU Senate. “There seems to be a lot of disconnect between senators and constituents they’re supposed to be representing.”

According to senior Jasmine Berg, speaker of the Treasury, the competition is a marked improvement for a race in which write-in candidates are occasionally elected.

SU officials hope that the competition will lead to a more representative Senate and Treasury.

“It’s a good way to make sure that the senators who are getting elected are people students actually think will represent their views on Senate matters,” said sophomore Mamatha Challa, speaker of the Senate.

Not all of the candidates are typical contenders.

Charles Levenson is running to “represent an underrepresented majority at Washington University”—those dissatisfied with SU.

In his candidate statement, he noted his personal reason for running.

“I represent the people at this fine university who want a system that can actually serve some purpose,” Levenson wrote in the statement. “To express this disdain, people vote for me so that I may be as much of a nuisance to the Student Government as humanly possible. They vote for me so I can filibuster meetings for hours, and watch how the lack of passing resolutions makes absolutely no difference in student’s lives whatsoever.”

Response to his candidacy ranged from dismayed to contemplative.

“I think it’s interesting,” Challa said. “If he gets elected, that’ll say something about how students are looking at the election, their reading and actually caring about it. I have some faith in the student body.”

Other candidates have different strategies for making SU better address student interests.

Sophomore Charles Herrera, who is running for an ArtSci seat in Senate, said he hopes to personally improve shortcomings in communication.

“Everyone always talks about improving communication,” Herrera said. “I believe I have the experience to actually get that done. I interned with a political campaign last summer and was the point man for keeping constituents apprised of activities in the campaign over Facebook and Twitter. My vision is that if I’m elected to Senate, I would be on those mediums during the meeting [to get feedback].”

Incumbents running for reelection have a narrower vision of what they would like to address.

Sophomore Class President J.R. Davis said he hopes to join SU Senate to address complacency in leadership and evaluate internal structure.

University Initiatives Chair Josh Aiken said he hopes to continue his current work into another term.

“I think that a lot of the goals and projects we have are long term, and I want to see them through,” said Aiken, a freshman.

Junior Zach Schmitz, a Senate incumbent, said he feels the same. He made video tours of off-campus Residential Life apartments. The video tours will launch on Tuesday.

“I found my personal project that I worked on very fulfilling,” Schmitz said. “I want to be able to have the opportunity to keep on doing things like that.”

Green Action

Many of the most pressing issues and controversies at Washington University right now are related to sustainability. Green Action has been at the forefront of this topic, but we feel the group could enhance its effectiveness and reach if it had the Student Union label behind it. Whether it’s managing the SU fund for sustainability initiatives or encouraging the University to drop its advocacy of so-called clean coal, a Green Action slate could have a large impact.

Greek life

We know that IFC and Panhel have grievances that have not been adequately addressed. Want SU funding for programs like philanthropy events? Think certain University policies are unfair toward Greek life? It would be a lot harder to ignore your needs if you had the backing of the student body behind you.

College Democrats

Bristol Palin is only the latest in a long line of controversial, SU-funded, conservative speakers. Why protest the likes of Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove when you could deny them funding instead? Or, better yet, fund big-name liberal speakers. Ensure campus-wide support for voter registration. Make SU a venue for creating a more politically active campus.

Washington University Political Review

For a more bipartisan approach that would essentially serve the same function as the College Democrats, we’d point to our campus’s political journal, whose members like to ask why students don’t care more about national issues. Don’t you think it’s high time you turned that discussion into action and used your powers of verbal persuasion to mobilize the student body?

Student athletes

We think both varsity and club athletes would benefit from a stake in SU. Sufficient and easy-to-navigate funding for club sports, improvements to the Athletic Complex, and better attendance at University sporting events are all issues that fall within the purview of SU and would benefit from greater student athlete input. Plus, there’s no denying that sports teach teamwork and leadership—valuable qualities in any SU executive board.

A melting pot

What we really think is that leaders in all of these groups ought to combine to form a slate that could accurately reflect the desires and grievances of multiple elements of the student body. But if that can’t happen, there’s always…

Yours truly

Maybe what Wash. U. really needs right now is a Student Life slate. It’s about time that the media control the government. Instead of merely urging SU to take action on these pages, we could make whatever decisions we wanted and then fill the newspaper with propaganda supporting our actions. Journalistic integrity and editorial independence are overrated anyway. Vote Student Life Editorial Board 2010-2011! (You can call us the “Inscribed Slate.”)

Republican treatment of the New START treaty shows Republicans’ dedication to ignoring America’s wants. The original START treaty, proposed by President Reagan and signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, aimed to reduce the number of nuclear weapons—a major goal of President Obama. The treaty has garnered tremendous support from Republican foreign policy experts like former Secretaries of State Colin Powell, James Baker and Henry Kissinger, among others. Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-IN), strongly supports the treaty. CNN/Opinion Research polled that 73 percent of Americans support ratification. The Senate seemed to listen to the American public when the treaty passed the committee 14-4.

The problem arose when Republicans saw the treaty as a potential victory for President Obama. The second most powerful Republican, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), has demanded more concessions to gain Republican support, slowing down the process. Even Republicans who voted for the treaty in committee now publicly oppose it. Despite the support of the American people and conservative foreign policy experts, Republicans are blocking the START treaty to portray the Democrats as weak and ineffective.

Republican obstructionism to score political points spreads beyond the START treaty. The military’s ban of openly gay soldiers hurts American security by discriminating against talented and patriotic soldiers. President Obama made repeal of the policy a campaign promise. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen both support a repeal and polls show strong American support for abolishment of this unfair law. Congressional Democrats have tried to repeal this bigoted policy but cannot get passed Republican obstructionism.

The leader of the opposition has been former moderate Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who sees no problem with ridding the military of exceptional soldiers based on their sexual orientation. He called for a hearing with military leaders about the policy; the leaders at the hearing supported repeal. Then McCain called for a Pentagon study of the policy. The study outlined how repeal would work and supported the action. Now McCain calls the study biased and demands hearings on the study. McCain’s conservative colleagues have banded together to oppose any repeal. Despite the tremendous support of military leaders and the American public, Republicans oppose repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to prevent the President from achieving his goals.

The area in which Republicans care least about Americans is the Bush tax cuts. Congress must make a choice whether to extend the tax cuts to all, let them expire for all or extend them only for those making under a certain amount. Congressional Democrats advocate for these tax cuts going to those hit hard by the struggling economy, while reducing the budget deficit by not giving a tax break to the rich. Democrats propose not extending the tax cuts for the two percent of the population making $250,000 or more: According to the Congressional Budget Office, doing this will reduce the debt by one trillion dollars over the next decade. The Republicans have stuck up for the rich, calling for a full extension of the Bush tax cuts. As much as the Republicans accuse Democrats of redistribution of wealth, one of every eight dollars that Bush sent out in tax rebate checks went to the wealthiest thousand Americans.

The polling on this topic varies more than the START Treaty or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because the framing of the question by various partisan polling firms changes the results significantly. One of the best nonpartisan pollsters, Gallup, polled the topic and only 37 percent favored extending tax cuts to the rich while 15 percent supported ending the Bush tax cuts and 44 percent supported tax cuts only for those making under $250,000. Other nonpartisan groups show similar support for repealing these tax cuts for the rich, but despite the American public’s opinion, the Republicans have held tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans hostage by rejecting cuts that do not include the rich.

Recent Republican action shows that they still care more about scoring points and defeating President Obama than representing America. They have not kept their views secret: The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), said their goal in the Senate was to defeat President Obama in 2012. This strategy could work but at the great expense of the economy, civil rights and American global prestige.

We encourage the student body to engage actively in these elections. Student Union Senate and Treasury hold ideologically important roles on campus, and with the right representatives, they present key vehicles for social change.

Student Union Treasury consists of 19 members who are collectively in charge of allocating a $2.4 million budget that comes from the Students Activities Fee, which is fixed at one percent of each student’s tuition.

The body is intended to allow a degree of autonomy and responsibility for students in how they allocate and program within the University. In comparison to other colleges and universities, this is unique. While the norm at many colleges is for the administration to hand groups portions of funding, Treasury allows for allocation by the students themselves.

Treasury representatives allocate money to student groups on the basis of their efficacy and the innovativeness of their programming. They determine which Assembly Series speakers come throughout the course of the year and which events and individual appeals are deserving of funding.

Because Treasury allocates resources in a way that theoretically reflects the interests of the student body, it is important, we feel, that these 19 members reflect this campus’s diversity and interests.

Student Union Senate is the primary advocacy body of SU and has 26 seats of undergraduates from all 5 divisions of the University. The administration views Senate as the voice of the student body, and in cases where student opinion differs from the University’s actions, Senate has the power to pass resolutions that oppose them.

Regardless of what it does in practice, Senate is, in theory, able to promote activism. In the 1970s, Senate was active in promoting racial diversity on campus. Last year, Senate representatives passed a resolution in opposition to the University’s stance on coal.

It is, therefore, imperative that Senate reflect the diversity and interests of the student body. And it is important that we take a role in electing representatives who will take the kind of actions we would like to see from such a theoretically powerful body.

Ultimately, we are responsible for the students that we elect to SU—and once we leave Wash. U., we may never have another community where our voices matter as much as they do now. With a multi-million dollar budget and the right representatives, we stand to make legitimate, substantive changes to the workings of this campus.

Or, at least, so the story goes.

The low turnout is an undisputed fact. Youth voting basically returned to pre-2006 midterm levels, completely bypassing the slight increase in the 2006 midterms and the dramatic rise in 2008. According to an analysis conducted by researchers at the Center for American Progress, voters between the ages of 18-29 years old dropped to 11 percent of the electorate, down from 18 percent in 2008 and 13 percent in 2006. For an age cohort that, according to the Census Bureau, represents about 18 percent of the total population, such regression is disappointing.

And really, anyone who was on campus in both 2008 and 2010 doesn’t need numbers to know that participation dropped radically. I feel a strange mix of nostalgia and regret at the idea that younger readers won’t understand this and that we collectively failed to provide them with the same enthusiastic political climate that we managed to create in 2008. So I suppose you’ll just have to trust that, to upperclassmen, the engagement gap is painfully obvious.

Yet the permanence of this assertion is not yet determined. The truth is that this story is still being written, and we are its authors. Our generation is at a crossroads for political involvement—make the 2010 elections an aberration by engaging ourselves or let others write our political future instead.

If senior citizens remain this country’s most reliable voting bloc, we’ll continue funding Social Security and Medicare at levels that support this generation of elderly but bankrupt the system before we can benefit. We’ll ignore climate change because most voters won’t be around to experience its consequences. Funding for higher education will languish because college students don’t show up. In short, we’ll keep kicking our country’s problems down the generational road for us to deal with once it’s basically too late. I’m sure you love your grandparents, but that doesn’t mean you should let them vote for you.

So back to the atmosphere of 2008. I think what truly disappoints me most about the turnout patterns and results of last week’s election is that I so badly want us to hold onto the hope we felt then. And yeah, I know plenty of you voted for John McCain. But for those who voted for Obama, I believe we had a real sense that our votes represented a turning point, a moment when we were able to take control of our political system and set the country on the course we wanted.

To become disillusioned now would mean to surrender. It would mean admitting that we are powerless to create change and that we were not, after all, the ones we were waiting for. I know that the vitriol and frustration of the past two years has encouraged this feeling. And yet, I don’t want disillusionment to win. Belief is a much more agreeable state of mind. I also think it’s more realistic.

Maybe it’s hard for a generation accustomed to high-speed Internet and its ensuing lightening-fast results to grasp the idea of gradual progress. But even though it now takes 15 seconds to look up the definition of change online, implementation still takes time. And in politics, nothing happens quickly.

The choice is ours. Let’s make sure the book on millennial political involvement is not finished yet.

Becky Zhao | Student Life

You may think that ceding all political power to robots is a ridiculous scheme, born out of too much of the Sci Fi channel. But if you consider this position logically, a robotic government makes as much sense as democracy, if not more. First of all, there would no longer be any need to waste time researching ballot measures and candidates before casting a vote that is about as useful and game changing as an individual krill. The portion of the electorate that casts ballots based on the gospel of Glenn Beck or the nebulous promise of change no longer has to pretend to care. Plus, who has time to vote anyway?

This of course, would drive Glenn Beck to do infomercials and Sarah Palin back to patrol the Russo-Alaskan border. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would probably go on to do a string of successful bromance movies before succumbing to drug addiction. Attack ads and talking head pundits would disappear, ridding the world of a considerable source of noise pollution. There would be no more sex scandals. The state of the economy would definitely improve; robots would have a firm grasp of basic economic principles. There would be no more partisan fighting. All of the robots would be controlled by a central supercomputer (possibly named HAL), so any protest would come from outside of the circle of robotic tyranny, namely, from humans. Any grumblings of discontent could quickly and easily be quelled by lasers.

Every decision would be made quickly and rationally, based on an infinite store of knowledge. No longer would decision-makers be beholden to soul-sucking special interests or the din of voters. The only things that would sway the robots would be facts and the threat of being replaced by the next model (this might get out of hand if Apple has anything to do with the design).

The only downside to the TRR, as far as I can tell, would be a Terminator-style scenario in which the robots decide that humanity’s pestilence should just be wiped off the earth altogether. And really, that wouldn’t be all bad. There’d be a lot more baby seals and whales frolicking about. There would be no more welfare, and America would withdraw from Iraq. And read their screens, no new taxes.