A general lack in student participation in elections and special
referendum measures is affecting the administrative support that
campus projects and programs need for implementation.
The most
recent example of this was a proposal from the Student Advisory
Committee to the Auraria Board to Metro’s Board
of Trustees to raise the student renewable energy fee from $1
to $5.
“The increase in the renewable energy fee is not being
particularly well-received,” said Brian Glotzbach, the
student trustee for the Student Government Assembly.
A main reason
for the board’s lack of support is that its
members are not convinced students are behind the raise in fees
or how it will benefit the campus.
“What the board has not been impressed with is student
votes that come in,” Metro President Stephen Jordan said. “If
520 students vote in favor of it out of 1,000, when there are
37,000 students out there, it isn’t necessarily, for the
board, a persuasive argument for supporting the fees.”
The
goals of the hike in fees are to reduce Auraria’s dependence
on fossil fuels and to minimize the negative ecological effects
of the campus. This will improve campus life for all members
of the Auraria community, according to the proposal.
Although
the board did not welcome the proposal, it did instruct SACAB
to hold its election on April 25 and 26.
“I think the board sort of sent the message (to SACAB), ‘You
better be prepared to make your case.’ So they’ve
been told to do their election and then they’ll come back,
I guess in the fall, and ask each of the boards to approve the
fee for January implementation,” Jordan said. “But
first they have to do their own election.”
Here is where
the problem arises. Student turnout for special elections on
campus has never been high, and according to Glotzbach,
since his time at Metro the highest turnout was about 900 students.
Unless the election to raise the fees sees a high turnout, Glotzbach
doubts the board will approve it.
“The odds they’ll pass a whole board are pretty
small,” he
said. “You’ve got to have more students to voice
their opinions about what they want done at this school.”
Other
problems are the number of elections each year and the difficulties
students encounter when attempting to vote.
“When you inundate students with so many special elections,
people tend to tune them out,” Glotzbach said.
The board
suggested that elections be coordinated with one another, so
as not to have multiple elections. Jordan said he believes
one of the reasons for low voter turnout is that there are so
many elections and that they are too discreet.
“What we’re trying to do is encourage the three
student governments to run their elections at the same time and
to get
out of this deal of having only one place to go vote,” Jordan
said. “And if CoPIRG (Colorado Public Interest Research
Group) or somebody is going to run a special election like that,
make sure you coordinate it with the general election, so the
students only go and vote one time and don’t have to be
told to go somewhere else to vote for this other deal.”
Glotzbach
agreed that consolidating elections was essential to increasing
the voter turnout. He added that voting needs to be
made easier for students, who should not have to navigate MetroConnect
for 10 minutes just to cast a vote. All voting should be put
online, so students are able to vote from the comfort of their
homes, he said.
The SGA will continue working with the Department
of Information Technology to make voting easier for students
and to publicize
elections. In Glotzbach’s opinion, the best way to do this
is through MetroConnect, possibly by having a pop-up that notifies
students as they log in to the website.
According to Glotzbach, if students are adamant about seeing
things done on campus – such as an increase in the renewable
energy fee – then they need to voice their opinions.
“I highly doubt that Metro’s Board of Trustees will reject
something that an overwhelming majority of students want,” he
said. “In my time working with the board, I have never
seen them reject something the students want just because they
don’t like it.”
