With Student Body President Charlie Schreiber and Vice President Courtney Bernard's term coming to an end, ASG met Tuesday to discuss and approve an election bylaw amendment as they prepare to elect a new student body president and vice president. Petitions for the positions will be accepted until March 5.
The senate revisited the election bylaw amendment, which was tabled in the previous meeting due to requests for more time to ask constituents their opinion on the amendment and to revise if necessary.
The amendment states if there are three or more candidates running for student body president or vice president positions, the winning candidate must have a 15 percent margin of victory in the primary elections in order to avoid a general election. If one of these candidates should win by 50 percent of the votes in the primary election, they will automatically be declared the winner.
The bylaws were revised slightly by the authors, including Bernard. She said she found the 15 percent victory margin clause inessential for the election procedures because the margin is unlikely to occur in a real election.
"We got rid of any percent margin of victory procedures," Bernard said. "We felt they were confusing and unnecessary to the amendment."
Many senators, including junior Kevin Krumpak, agreed the existing bylaws were confusing, not widely-accepted and needed amending.
Nobody completely agreed on the previous bylaws and this new amendment fixes a lot of issues, he said.
Senior senator Brandon Patterson was also satisfied with the revision.
"I think the bill we're seeing today is much stronger than the one from last week," he said.
The amendment was approved unanimously by the senate.
Bernard said this newly-amended bylaw is particularly pertinent due to the upcoming student body president election.
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"The positions of student body resident and vice president are open to all full-time undergraduate students studying at the Oxford campus who are in good academic and disciplinary standing with the university," she said.
Students running for these positions must be elected as a slate, meaning the student body president and vice president must run together. They must also compose a petition of at least 150 undergraduate signatures and unique IDs.
According to Bernard, this information must be turned into her in room 2012 in the Armstrong Student Center by 8 p.m. March 5.
On March 8, soft campaigning begins, where candidates cannot yet disclose their plans of running to more than one person over electronic media, according to ASG election rules.
Open campaigning will start March 31. During this time, candidates can voice their campaign through sources of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and email.
If there are more than two slates running for the positions of student body president and vice president, a primary election will be held on April 9. In this primary election, if a slate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, they will be declared the winner, according to the new election bylaw amendment.
Provided a slate does not win the primary election, the general election will be held April 16.
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