Judicial Board nominees were confirmed and the election process was revised at the most recent meeting of the Binghamton University Student Congress last Monday, March 27.

The meeting began with a moment of silence to honor the memory of BU freshman Conor Donnelly, who died on March 18. Donnelly was involved with the Student Association (SA) during his time as the president of Johnson Hall of Dickinson Community.

Both items on the agenda were initiated by SA President Nicholas Ferrara, a senior majoring in political science. During his executive board report, Ferrara introduced the nomination and confirmation of three new SA Judicial Board members. The Judicial Board is the branch of the SA that deals with the interpretation of the SA’s rules, and judges serve for four semesters.

The three nominees were Laine Cohen, a member of the constitution and judicial committee for Dickinson Town Council and an undeclared freshman; Luis Silva, an undeclared freshman; and Alex Glazowski, the vice president of finance for the College-in-the-Woods Council and a sophomore double-majoring in history and political science. Each of the nominees were interviewed by Ferrara multiple times prior to the Student Congress session and had experience working within the framework of the SA.

“My involvement in community government has significantly allowed me to get involved in the higher levels of the SA,” Glazowski said. “I feel like this is a great way for me to further my involvement but also give back to my community and the SA as a whole.”

Each of the three nominees were confirmed by a two-thirds vote from Student Congress.

Next, Ferrara introduced a resolution that would improve the clarity of the SA Executive Board’s election policy and included changes to the BU Council student representative policy. Ferrara presented the amendments to Student Congress and voting was pushed to a later date.

“After the election, there were a few minor things here and there throughout the election rules that came to our attention that could read slightly different so that they’re not as confusing,” Ferrara said.

Significant changes were also made to the rules concerning mass-campaign emails. While candidates were previously allowed to send large-scale emails to organizations that have expressed support for a certain candidate, they now cannot send “significantly similar emails” to eight or more addresses for campaigning purposes unless groups consent to receiving such emails.

An additional change to the time in which candidates may campaign was extended to 28 semester days before the election, an increase from the previous 18.

Changes to the latter half of the legislation were in accordance with requests from the Graduate Student Organization. Similar to the changes made to the executive board election policy, the election of the BU Council student representative now states that members of the BU Council Elections Committee cannot be a candidate or support a particular candidate.

The resolution will be discussed again at the next meeting on Monday, April 3.