SGA temporarily loses affiliation, nullifies elections

Last week's SGA Senate meeting was spent discussing issues SGA has recently encountered, including a temporary loss of the group's affiliation and the nullification of the recent SGA elections.

The SGA recently lost its affiliation for nearly two weeks when President John Bryant failed to turn in affiliation-related paperwork. Bryant stated that he is not quite sure how the error occurred.

"I believe that I turned it in," said Bryant regarding the necessary forms to apply for re-affiliation. "I don't know why it wasn't [turned in]."

Bryant did not inform members of the SGA or the organizations funded by the SGA of the predicament until the SGA meeting on March 18. The organizations lost funding for those two weeks, and the lack of money is how some came to realize they were no longer affiliated with the university.

"The reason that it was not brought up and talked about with the entire student body before," explained Bryant, "was because I thought it could get handled quickly."

Bryant sent a letter explaining the predicament and the SGA regained its affiliation, but is now on probation until Spring 2009. If the SGA has another violation during the probation, a council set up by Student Affairs will become the student government. This is the second time the SGA has lost affiliation, as far as Bryant can remember, he said.

The UNCG SGA was also placed on probation in February of 2007, after failing to inform the university 12 hours before holding an event on campus. That probation carried

Contested election

In addition to affiliation complications, the SGA was also dealing with the trouble of this year's elections. Elections were held the first week of March, but the results have been nullified.

As stated in a letter drafted by Makeia Taylor, Elections and Publicity Committee chair, the elections will be re-done. The decision was made after members of the Elections and Publicity Committee felt the integrity of the elections was compromised. According to Taylor, two candidates were left off the ballot during a process of rearranging some candidates in order to give them a better chance of being elected. In addition, emails explaining the voting process were not sent out to all UNCG students due to technological difficulties, and some candidates allegedly failed to remove campaigning materials after campaigning had ended.

Because of re-election, all campaigning will also be redone, as will presidential and vice-presidential debates. There was consideration by the Elections Committee to reimburse candidates for campaigning for which they could provide receipts. However, Larissa Manon, student attorney general, quoted policy stating SGA cannot fund any campaigning.

Checka Leinwall, faculty advisor for the SGA Senate and director of Campus Activities and Programs, responded to a question raised about the emails not being sent to everyone. She explained there were "several issues that converged" to create the problem and that there were "multiple system failures."

"There is no perfect system," continued Leinwall. "And I cannot guarantee every student will get the email the next time."

In addition, a new schedule was announced including a date for debates and the actual election. However, when Anna Sonnenwald, Legislative Committee chair, motioned to approve the schedule, the motion could not be allowed because it appeared there were no SGA members who are on the Elections and Publicity Committee, besides Taylor, actually present during the meeting when the schedule was decided on.

"We are not sure if the committee actually made the decision," said Justin Fisher, vice president.

Since there were no decisions made regarding the new elections, the approval of scheduling is to be done at the next SGA Senate meeting on Tuesday, March 25, which, unless more dates are added to the currently posted schedule, is the last meeting scheduled for the semester.

"I urge everyone, including myself, to read the government documents and understand what we are standing by," said Sen. Michael Boglovits, a candidate for SGA president, in closing.

The heated SGA meeting was ended with a proposal by Andrea Schronce, a senator running for vice president, to collect money for a donation of UNCG colored flowers to be sent to UNC Chapel Hill in remembrance of Eve Carson, the SGA president recently murdered.

"No matter how badly things seem to be going here, we must remember things could be a lot worse," said Schronce.

Schronce's running mate, Michael Tuso, then led the SGA in a moment of silence to remember Carson.