Students to determine new representation

The UW-River Falls Student Senate election ballot will have 12 candidates listed along with the presidential and vice presidential candidates hoping to get a spot on Senate for the 2013-14 academic year.

Student Senate Elections Commissioner Hannah Carlson said that it’s typical to have this many candidates on the ballot but it’s unusual to have the amount of people running for each available position.

“There’s at least one person running for everything, so all of the positions that can be filled will be filled at this point,” Carlson said. “What’s weird though is that quite a few of them have just one person running for it, and then there’s a couple that have five.”

With the exception of the write-in portion on the ballot, there are currently five students running for the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) representative as well as the College of Business and Economics (CBE) representative position.

Each candidate will be listed on the ballot for the at-large senator position as well as any other positions they are running for. This is to give those who do not get voted in for their position of choice to still be a part of Senate.

CBE candidate Stephen Middlemiss was encouraged to run for Senate by friends who thought he would do the job well. His primary concerns are the student fees.

“The budget would be my primary concern. I believe anything else after that would be secondary. I think that students would appreciate reducing their student fees or  seeing it be used to its full effects,” Middlemiss said.

Another candidate who is running for the At-Large Senator position is Nicholas Vanden Huevel. He decided to run for Senate because he was unhappy with some of the decisions that were being made and thought he could make a difference.

“If you’re unsatisfied with how the process is working then run and try to change it,” Vanden Huevel said.  “My goal is to make sure that the students are well represented and my other one is to make sure that we will not try to raise a whole bunch of fees on [students] and to mainly make sure that [students] are OK.”

Both candidates agreed that another goal of theirs is to make sure that the students are aware of what Senate is doing.

“One of the problems that we see, and actually one of the things in the presidential race, is that they talk about how Student Senate is not a very visible organization,” Vanden Huevel said.

Carlson said that there are a variety of veteran Senate members and new candidates that are running for Senate. She said it will make for a good Senate by having new opinions and ideas mixed with those who have had experience with Senate already.

“I think it’s a good variety of students there are a couple of returners but there are a lot of new faces, new names that are going to be on the ballot this year which I think is great to have a mixture between some of the veterans and then having new, fresh ideas. So, I think that no matter what, we’re looking at a good Senate for next year,” Carlson said.

The ballot will be sent to students in an email for voting to begin at 8 a.m. on Monday, April 15 and will close at noon on Tuesday, April 16.