Binghamton University Council, the University’s advisory and oversight committee, has already met once this academic year without a student representative.
Leaders in student government are working to ensure that a student representative is elected in time for the next meeting.
BU Council is responsible for recommending candidates for the presidency of the University and the SUNY Board of Trustees, for drafting the Student Code of Conduct and for reviewing plans for the improvement of the University, among other duties.
Nine of the Council’s 10 members are appointed by the governor of New York, and the other member must be a student elected by his or her peers. The representative may be either an undergraduate or graduate student and would ideally represent the interests of both portions of the student population.
Letters of intent to run were formally solicited through an announcement on SA-Line this Wednesday, and they will be accepted until Sunday at 11:59 p.m.
Elections are currently planned for Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m. in the New University Union — runoffs or reruns, if necessary, will be held the next day — ensuring that a student representative will be chosen in time for the council’s Friday meeting.
Elections for the student representative to the council usually take place in March, at the same time as the Student Association’s executive board elections, said SA President Adam Amit.
“For various reasons the election committee was not formed last semester,” he added.
The elections committee was formed this semester, and it met for the first time this Tuesday to discuss the logistics of the elections process.
“We wanted to have a representative at the first meeting,” Amit said, but midway through the elections process, he and other members of the SA and Graduate Student Organization realized the procedures they were following were not in accordance with the SA constitution.
The SA and the GSO were each running their own set of elections for the Council, but their constitutions stipulate that the elections process must be a joint effort. They postponed the elections and reorganized, Amit said, because “doing it right was far more important.”
Cagri Idiman, president of the GSO, said that he hopes that the elected representative will provide strong representation for students, and not merely “rubber-stamp” the actions and decisions of the council.
Students interested in running for the council should e-mail their letter of intent, including their name, e-mail address, phone number and a declaration of candidacy for the position to bucouncil@sa.binghamton.edu. Also visit bucouncil.binghamton.edu for more information.