Seat vacancies remain after elected senators disqualified

Seven of the 22 elected Student Government (SG) senators lost their positions before they were even seated.

Campaign violations of spending more than the allowed $100 budget for candidates and failing to turn in funding receipts disqualified seven elected senators and 19 candidates Friday, SG adviser Gary Manka said in an e-mail.

“All disqualifications were budget-related,” Manka said. “Candidates either failed to submit a budget report entirely or they submitted the budget report after the deadline had elapsed.”

According to the official results released Wednesday, there are now 19 students who were officially elected in the midterm election, which was held Oct. 13 and 14 to fill 25 vacant senate seats. Sixty-two students ran in the election.

A total of 2,124 students voted in the election, according to the results.

At Tuesday’s senate meeting, the senators-elect were sworn in and seated, though some of the winning candidates were absent from the meeting.

SG senate president Jennifer Belmont said all elected students were required to turn in their campaign budget receipts by 4 p.m. on Oct. 16.

Any elected students who went over the budget or did not turn in receipts by the deadline would be disqualified and removed from their seats, and the candidate with the next-highest vote would be seated instead, Belmont said.

Of the disqualified candidates, there were two in the College of Arts and Sciences, two in the College of Education, one in the College of Medicine and one in the College of the Arts.

There was one disqualification in the College of Engineering, where the candidate was in a tie, and it eliminated the need for a run-off election, Belmont said.

Three runners-up were placed in the disqualified candidates’ senate seats: two in the College of Arts and Sciences and one in the College of the Arts. This still leaves three vacant seats because there were no runners-up to fill them.

Two vacancies also remain in the College of Nursing, which is allotted three seats, because only one student ran for a seat in the election.

Additional reporting by Anastasia Dawson