Voting for student council begins in April
By Alex Emslie STAFF WRITER
City College students will have the opportunity to vote for 15 senators and one president of the Associated Student Council at the end of April. Members of the elections commission are working ardently to increase voter turnout this year.
With about 60,000 students attending classes at Ocean campus, the 2008 - 09 council was elected by only 0.34 percent of the student body — only 204 votes were cast in last year’s elections. ASC Elections Commissioner Pamela Ward said, “Honestly, I’m hoping to get at least 1,000 students to vote in this election.”
Polls will be open April 28 and 29 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Polling stations will be located at Ram Plaza, outside Batmale Hall and between the Science Building and Cloud Hall.
“Most of us come here, we go to class, we go to work, and then we go home,” said student trustee Diana Muñoz-Villanueva , who will be leaving the council after this semester, about the lack of voter participation. “Most students don’t really hang out [on campus]. So, how do we get the information out to those students? That’s been a big challenge.”
Candidates for the office of student trustee, who represents students at City College board of trustee meetings, will also be on the ballot. The student trustee is not a member of any campus ASC, however, and students attending any City College campus can vote for that position.
Ward attributed last year’s abysmal voter participation and mostly uncontested field of candidates to a lack of understanding of the ASC’s representation of students.
“The AS council, in my opinion, is a group of concerned students who want to help. They want to make things better for the students attending classes here,” Ward said. “They want to provide the support a lot of students need, either through financial help or other programs. The programs that the AS council supports and funds include the HARTS program, Bookloan, most of the resource centers on campus, and they organized the whole March in march. So they’re out there looking out for student interests.”
“I’m pretty happy with the results of the candidates that we have,” she said. “It’s a huge increase — 5 presidents and 32 senators. Four of those presidents aren’t going to make it. About half of the senators aren’t going to make it. We’ve got a real election going.”
Groups of students who decide to run with a shared mission statement can form a slate, which may be confusing to voters. Members of slates are still elected individually, but they share the workload of campaigning along with an ideology. Three slates are running in the upcoming Ocean campus elections: Voice, O.S. and United Students For Change. All of the slate and independent mission statements will be in a voter guide which is tentatively scheduled for publication by Friday, March 27.
Once elected, presidents are awarded a $9,000 service scholarship. Vice presidents, who are appointed by the ASC from the pool of senators, are each awarded $6,480. Uncontested elections like last year’s make these scholarships easy to obtain, according to Ward.
The ASC operated with a budget of approximately $400,000 last year, some of which comes from the optional five dollar student activity fee payable upon registration each semester. Student trustee Muñoz emphasized that voting in the ASC elections is one way students can influence how that money is spent. She said, “Elect people who really envision what you envision for City College.”
