The Student Government Association senate passed a bill in a meeting Wednesday, extending Alliance’s term until May.
The bill originally said the term would be from August to May, instead of the previous March to March. This change was supposed to happen in 2014, but the senate voted to make the change now.
“The students that were in senate thought it was better to get this out of the way and fixed than to wait another whole year to have this problem again,” Chris Wilkey, SGA president, said. “The slate was OK with passing it this year or next year — we didn’t care either way.”
Wilkey said Alliance was not pushing for the bill to be passed this year. He said the slate is volunteering two months of its time because the members think it will fix the organization.
SGA had been addressed by administration, including Ball State President Jo Ann Gora, to have its term changed because the organization is the only one on campus that has elections in March.
This timeline proved difficult to work on projects, Wilkey said, and it’s hard to transition from one slate to the next in a week.
With the term ending in May, the new SGA slate will have from March until the first week in May to transition. This will provide time to learn from the previous slate, he said.
The bill was revised, along with the rest of the election code, in the senate meeting Wednesday, said Zeynel Guzeldereli, president pro tempore. After the members voted on the bill individually, along with some other changes, the senate voted on the entire code.
“I think that [for] the future of SGA, looking down the road in 10 years, it’s going to be a great thing,” Guzeldereli said. “The fact that our government system can be on the same page with all the other according government systems at the university just kind of shows that we’re willing to cooperate and unify and look into requests from other people on campus.”
