Proper action would have avoided election delay

The Student Senate voted last Thursday to delay the annual spring student government elections until mid-May after elections committee members resigned to protest their late appointment.

The committee should have been appointed by ASPSU President Bar Johnston during fall term, but she did not appoint the committee until the week prior to finals during winter term, giving the committee little to no time to properly organize an election slated for April 18-20.

The committee had only three weeks to alert the student body of the opportunity to apply for candidacy. Of those three weeks, one was finals week and the other was spring break.

The elections committee members who resigned in protest did so because their late assignment precluded total student body involvement and unfairly gave an edge to students already heavily involved in student government.

So we ask the question, did Johnston purposefully delay appointment of a committee to keep the ordinary student from running? Why did she fail to appoint the committee during fall term?

The elections committee acted responsibly in resigning and forcing a delay until May. Now, students who wouldn’t have gotten involved before will have the proper opportunity to do so.