The Michigan Review

Michigan Review Blogs

November 29th, 2007

MSA elections are TODAY

MSA, as well as LSA-SG and Rackahm student government elections began this morning. This year’s election has received little to no attention in campus press.

For those of you who actually want your right of suffrage you can vote by clicking here to go to the voting page. You have until Friday at midnight to review your ballot and cast your votes.

So you did not hear about this election. That may be in part due to a shift of focus toward using Facebook among campus’ cloistered chattering class, Even with two days of front page stories in the Daily about MSA (ironically about a scandal” on Facebook) neither the Daily or MSA President Zack Yost bothered to mention that elections are today. So while LSA-SG begins procedures to remove Ken Baker from his post due to his involvement in the Facebook scandal, students could give both bodies a hearing by voting in the election.

“It’s certainly a down year in terms of publicity. But I would not say that in the dorms among student groups that we have had any less interest,” Michigan Action Party Chair Alex Blouin told The Review in a phone interview. Blouin also blamed the low level of publicity on the multiple times that election date has moved this term. Originally scheduled for early this month the election was pushed back twice before settling on the current dates. Blouin stated that the move positioned the election just after Thanksgiving and just before finals, a bad time to vie for media or student attention.

One of MAP’s platform goals for this election was to “Encourage voting for student government by more accessible resources.” Blouin said this included a two-prong effort of recruiting a good group of candidates and reaching out to student groups.

A quick look at the website of the ruling Michigan Action Party, reveals a list of goals that looks much like those of previous campaigns, like expanding Entree Plus off-campus and getting course syllabi online early to let students order books online.

MAP has done a good job of running a full-slate of candidates. The party is running 10 students for the 10 open seats on MSA-LSA and 9 for the 10 open seats on LSA-SG, a move that with one independent leads to exactly 10 students for 10 slots.

“We don’t let who we are running against affect how we run. If we were running with no one else we would still be out meeting with students,” said Blouin, continuing that MAP has done its best to attract the best candidates this year.

I should not forget to mention that the Defend Affirmative Action Party also has a full slate for the MSA-LSA elections. Although to my knowledge, no DAAP party member has won a contested election since at least 2004. The party has done best in schools like Rackham where the field is often uncontested. This year there are six Rackham candidates, 3 of them from DAAP.

A handful of independents and two members of a group calling itself the Michigan Independent Party are also running for MSA-LSA.

Among the smaller schools represented on MSA, many schools have no contest at all. MAP is the only party running candidates in the schools of engineering, business, Nursing, and Public Policy. While DAAP is the only party running in the School of Public Health. Programs in Dentistry, Music, Medicine and Pharmacy, all of which have one seat on MSA have no candidates at all.

Write-in candidates are allowed in all races.

sex techniques milf riders teens little tiny boobs hardcore lesbians exposed thongs beastiality stories bath cum Map

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Day in Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.