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Two tickets gear up
for SGA elections
Campaign period begins Monday after spring
break |
David Forbes
SGA Beat
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Adam Bennett | The AppalachianSGA candidates met last Wednesday
in Plemmons Student Union to discuss the bylaws for this year’s
campaigning and election process.
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Two tickets will soon
be vying for the positions of Student Government Association President
and Vice President. Rachel A. Johnson and Lauren N. Linville will
be running against Patrick G. Cash and H. Dustin Bayard.
The elections committee confirmed the tickets
last Wednesday. At a meeting the same day, Rules Chair Kevin M.
Turner and the elections committee went over all the election bylaws
with the two tickets. |
“We
went into an extreme amount of detail about each bylaw because candidates
in the past have felt there was an extreme amount of ‘gray’
area in plenty of the bylaws and we’ll do everything in our
power to stop the gray area. The tickets came to mutual agreements
on areas they felt were unclear. They expressed their concerns and
as a team effort we found a middle ground,” Turner said Monday.
“We did it from the get go so candidates would know where they
could and couldn’t go and how they needed to run their campaign.”
The official campaign period does not begin until March 17, though
candidates can seek suggestions and let students know they are running,
Turner said.
Voting for the elections will be conducted online beginning March
17.
On one ticket, Johnson, a senior psychology major from Hickory is
running for president and Linville, a junior political science major
from Winston-Salem, is running for vice president.
Johnson is currently director of Academic Affairs in SGA. She said
she started out in student government in high school. At Appalachian,
her involvement with the Appalachian Popular Programming Society
sparked her interest in SGA, which she joined last year.
“I was also in elections committee last year, and that really
drew me into the politics. It made me sad to see how much of the
politics behind the elections was cut throat and vicious, and that
drew me in even deeper,” Johnson said Friday “My main
goal has always been and will always be to help the students. When
I see something I don’t like, I’m the type of person to
go out there and change it, and I like to motivate other people
to do the same.”
Linville is currently director of Internal Affairs in SGA and did
not have any experience in student government until this year when
she got her cabinet post.
“I wasn’t involved in student government in high school,
but I was that annoying kid who was always going to the administrators
whenever I thought there was a problem in the school. I wanted to
do something on this campus, and after following elections last
year, I really wanted to get involved and do something for the school,”
Linville said Friday.
On the other ticket, Cash, a senior political science major, is
running for president, and Bayard, a senior political science major,
for vice president.
Cash is currently an off-campus senator. He joined SGA his freshman
year, and last year served as Rules Chair. He said overseeing elections
last year in that position was a decisive experience for him.
“I’d never considered trying to fill the job [of president]
until that election. I saw a lot of the disgusting nature of politics
that can actually occur at Appalachian, and I chose to run out of
disgust,” Cash said Saturday.
Bayard is currently an off-campus senator as well and was in student
government throughout high school and has been in SGA at Appalachian
for three years. Bayard ran for vice president last year as well,
on a ticket that lost in a run-off election by a narrow 25 votes.
“Being a senator for three years, I’m very familiar with
the system. The last three years, I’ve studied it, I’ve
read Robert’s Rules of Order, the SGA constitution and I’ve
realized that the system can work, you just have to have people
there that will allow it to function well,” Bayard said Saturday. |
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