Spring Break
Letters to the editor
Issue date: 9/12/08 Section: News
Does this sound fair?
The purpose of any election in a democratic society is for candidates to run on a level playing field and to have the votes of all parties wishing to vote counted.
First, concessions were made by the Associated Student Government to candidates who where unable to attend a mandatory meeting due to "scheduling issues."
Sixty-seven potential senators sacrificed their time to rearrange their schedules in order to attend, and now the seven others are permitted to run against them.
Sadly, at least two of them will sit on the Senate.
So much for a level playing field.
This is deplorable, and a slap in the face to those candidates who followed the rules.
Will further concessions be made for these senators when they decide they are unable to attend scheduled Senate meetings? Are these the people we want representing us?
Then we have the fiasco related to graduate and law students not being able to vote online.
Due to an "uncorrectable error," all graduate students were originally told they would have to submit paper ballots. This effectively eliminated the votes of all remote graduate students.
Nice job in seeing that all students wanting to vote are represented.
While this could have easily been resolved without making it public knowledge within one hour by simply reentering data, it took me threatening to formally protest the election process (which I will), and nearly two days to correct this.
The powers that be have decided in their infinite wisdom that all graduate students must revote, and their Senate candidates must compete under a compressed time period. They should be embarrassed by this debacle.
I am disappointed for the University of Arkansas and will no longer be part of this circus.
Brian Cicio
Graduate student
Operations Management
The purpose of any election in a democratic society is for candidates to run on a level playing field and to have the votes of all parties wishing to vote counted.
First, concessions were made by the Associated Student Government to candidates who where unable to attend a mandatory meeting due to "scheduling issues."
Sixty-seven potential senators sacrificed their time to rearrange their schedules in order to attend, and now the seven others are permitted to run against them.
Sadly, at least two of them will sit on the Senate.
So much for a level playing field.
This is deplorable, and a slap in the face to those candidates who followed the rules.
Will further concessions be made for these senators when they decide they are unable to attend scheduled Senate meetings? Are these the people we want representing us?
Then we have the fiasco related to graduate and law students not being able to vote online.
Due to an "uncorrectable error," all graduate students were originally told they would have to submit paper ballots. This effectively eliminated the votes of all remote graduate students.
Nice job in seeing that all students wanting to vote are represented.
While this could have easily been resolved without making it public knowledge within one hour by simply reentering data, it took me threatening to formally protest the election process (which I will), and nearly two days to correct this.
The powers that be have decided in their infinite wisdom that all graduate students must revote, and their Senate candidates must compete under a compressed time period. They should be embarrassed by this debacle.
I am disappointed for the University of Arkansas and will no longer be part of this circus.
Brian Cicio
Graduate student
Operations Management
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