Surprise Attack Division (SGA).

This week, SGA listened to both sides of the argument for and against partnership with Columbia Elections Board. Their constitutional review committee has been working all year to make helpful changes to the SGA constitution, but these presentations required them to take quick action on their (nonexistent) affiliation with the Columbia Elections Board.

“When shit comes up, we deal with it,” says Michelle Depardieu, head of SGA’s Constitutional Review Committee. Several SGA members weren’t so sure about how they wanted to deal with the possibility of letting Columbia Elections Board (CEB) handle their elections. While they were initially leaning towards it, this year’s elections (and alleged mishandling of them) brought up new controversy: is it better to let a third, less biased party run elections, or should SGA remain in charge of the process despite their clear bias towards their SGA friends?

The first guest speaker of the evening was a CC student previously involved in student councils (not affiliated with CEB), who adamantly believed  CEB was simply not equipped to deal with the elections of two undergraduate schools (CC and SEAS), let alone add another. He outlined some of the previous controversy surrounding CEB: they failed to fill several spots, they did not properly advertise the elections, and when they realized they needed to fill more spots, they were strangely selective when dealing with new candidates. The speaker did not think the CEB’s mishandling of elections was out of malice, but that they were understaffed and simply did not have the resources. The Elections Board chair failed to recognize CEB did anything wrong, while CC and SEAS presidents made comments about the lack of advertisement of their elections as well as a lack of candidates.

Then, the rebuttal: a member of CEB presented her case, claiming the CEB had indeed done everything correctly (even claiming several of the previous speaker’s statements were incorrect), using a frankly snarky tone to explain that the elections were advertised, for example, the Class of 2019’s elections were advertised two whole days prior to the voting deadline in their Facebook group. As if one more day of notice makes a difference.

After CEB’s presentation, the meeting took a break from the debate for a dry conversation about the Global Symposium. SGA members were interested in finding out about the Global Symposium’s role at Barnard and how it impacts the community on campus, which the student fellows (only two, both sophomores, were able to attend the SGA meeting), replied to in rather formal, unenthusiastic tones. Their words said great things about Barnard’s Global Symposium, which their reactions to questions left awkward pauses and repeated phrases that were clearly answers to questions they were tired of being asked (at least it seemed). SGA appeased them, asking more and more about how they could use the Global Symposium to have a greater impact on both the Barnard and global community. But really, this segment felt as though it was there simply to please someone.

Of course, it was then back to constitutional review, where the most heated topic was involvement with CEB. Through a lot of heated debate, uncomfortable feelings among SGA members who disagreed on the topic, and limited options, the ultimate decision was that they would like to table any involvement with CEB until the next constitutional review in three years, in order to see how they react to and fix the issues present this year. SGA says that, ideally, they don’t want to be involved in their own elections in order to increase diversity. However, for the time being, there is just not a good option to move that responsibility to a third party.

Weebs via The Boar/CC-BY-SA-3.0