<n Monday, May 16 and lasting until 11:59 A.M. on Wednesday, May 19, the Carleton Student Association (CSA) held elections for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year. Emails were sent out, doors were knocked on, and the Senate did their best to publicize the elections in order to get the most democratic and varied election possible.
Of the two thousand students on campus, there were a total of 1010 votes. Students voted online on Carleton’s CSA website. With eighteen spots available on the CSA senate liaison list, candidates were responsible for getting votes, and some students reportedly ran their campaigns while abroad.
Along with voting for office members, the CSA also included on the ballot three referendum questions. The first question was: should the CSA Constitution be amended to add the following section? (Sub-Section A. Any referendum, which proposes an additional line-item charge to be added onto the college comprehensive fee statement, will be valid only if the fee is an “opt-in only” charge levied through affirmative indication.) The response was a definite “yes”, with a 618 : 253 ratio. The second question asked whether MPIRG’s desire to include a $9.00 fee should be included in the fee statement for students. The majority voted “no”. The final question asked whether the CSA Constitution should be replaced with the newly proposed version, and was also voted as “yes”, with a 579: 94 ratio.
The new CSA president, Isaac Hodes, said that, “it was unfortunate that the CSA’s changes to the Constitution did not pass given the nature of the changes, but we’ll be trying again with even more publicity in the winter elections. On the other hand, while we’ll miss our graduating seniors, we are very excited to begin work with the newly elected liaisons in the coming year.”
