In its meeting last night, the Student Government Association revised the SGA/Student Programming Association election petition.Deanna Duet, arts and sciences senator, successfully motioned to eliminate the practice of requiring 15 signatures supporting the candidacy of any student running for office.
“The reason for this change is the increasing reluctance of students to write down their social security numbers on the petition,” Duet said.
“The petition will remain the same in all other areas. This will be effective in the fall of 2001.”
SGA secretary Elaine Musso said that in addition to the security problems caused by dispensing social security numbers, many signees are not in the same colleges as the senators whose petitions they are signing.
Many e-mail address passwords on campus are the social security numbers of the users.
“They refused to give their social security numbers simply because of identity theft, and you can’t blame them,” Musso said.
She said she asked Kelly Rodrigue, director of records and registration, if there was anyway other than social security numbers to accurately identify students.
Rodrigue told Musso there was no other way.
“We did not have an election this year simply because we did not have enough people to fill the positions. This may help to get more people to run, and after all, 15 people out of 5,000 is not a statement,” Musso said.
In other business, President Scott Duplantis announced the speaker for the SGA banquet.
“I had lunch with Judge John Weimer today, and he’s going to be the speaker for our banquet. He’s a former two-term SGA president, and a guy that’s still really active in the community,” Duplantis said.
Nicole Perero, director of students’ rights and grievances, said she acted upon a complaint made about excessively loud music coming from a personal radio in Bollinger Memorial Student Union.
“I talked to Union Services about loud music that has been playing in the Union, and they said they will keep an eye out for it,” Perero said.
She also said she will speak to Sabrina Laurent, director of residential services, about the problems of elevators in the residence halls.
