Look, let’s be honest. The Senate elections are a farce. How could they be described as anything but a farce, if year after year, elections in most of the University’s schools are either uncompetitive or uncontested? How can the organization purport to be the voice of the student body if anyone can just sign up to be put on the ballot and win?

This week, 37 students will be running for 24 seats in an unusually contested set of Student Union elections. 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.

Imagine you walk into a doctor’s office. You step on the scale and you see a number. The doctor writes a number twenty pounds lighter. He feels your arm and randomly writes a good score for your blood pressure. Confused, you ask the doctor what’s going on.

Although the U.S. Senate passed a resolution that will maintain Pell Grant funding for the 2011-2012 academic year, universities nationwide continue to be uneasy over the potential for future cuts to the program.

Students signed up in larger numbers this spring to run for Student Union Treasury and Senate, with many taking motivation from the fallout over Treasury’s vote to fund a panel featuring Bristol Palin. 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.

A who’s who of area politicians showed up to support Robin Carnahan’s Senate race on Sunday afternoon. Among the speakers were Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-St. Louis).

Campus may be tobacco-free, but now smokers congregate at the intersection of Forsyth Boulevard and Wallace Drive. The resulting cloud has exposed some students to more secondhand smoke than before the ban.

On September 22, Washington University political science Professor Steven Smith testified in front of the US Senate’s Committee on Rules and Administration regarding his thoughts on the Senate’s current filibuster rules, and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) proposed reform.

Student Union Treasury on Tuesday barely voted down legislation to create the Diversity Affairs Council, leaving the future of the proposal in doubt. The vote was 7-6-1. A two-thirds majority, or 10 votes, was needed to pass the legislation. Earlier that evening, Treasury had gone through the legislation’s articles and approved each one individually. When Treasury voted on the entire legislation, however, it did not pass.

In a stunning reversal of fortune, the Democratic supermajority in the United States Senate has now been shattered with the election of Republican Scott Brown to succeed the late Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Brown received 52 percent to his Democratic challenger Martha Coakley’s 47 percent, an astonishing demonstration of widespread apathy and even anger at President Obama’s health care reform proposal.