"The Senate did not release the top finishers in the election, referring to each candidate by a different letter."

Actually, the Senators were never given the names of the top finishers. The Election Commission decided not to release the names at the time so as not to bias their vote or present the appearance of bias.

I think that's an important distinction -- it's not like the Senate is hiding anything.

Can GUSA just stop existing already?

Yo, relax your body

How can you blame GUSA for this? This falls directly on the Election Commission, confusing IRV interface, and the Student Body for being too lazy to actually rank their preferences rather than randomly choose in alphabetical order. Perhaps if all students were not so apathetic, GUSA could actually get something done.

GUSA put the alphabetical ballot together in the first place. They just didn't like the fact that their boy lost. And besides, if students want to vote alphabetically, that's their right. GUSA's really stepped in it this time.

"...the vox populi, now vacant, vanished."

The Election Commission and the GUSA Senate are pathetic and undemocratic. The election was legitimate, but they decided to disqualify the election because "the numbers were all so close"? Are they kidding? Elections won by small margins are still victories. If these idiots had actually thought things through they would have realized that there is a potential correlation between placement and the ballot and votes. That is a situation where candidates would draw straws or names would be picked out of a hat in order to determine ballot placement.

This is worse than disqualifying Khalil and Geoff for someone having a laptop in Leo's. This election rigging is similar to how Saddam Hussein would get 99.9% of the Iraqi vote time and time again. The GUSA elections have become a coronation where the Election Commission and Senate play around with rules until the "right" person wins.

Now, they want to have a fly-by-night sham election right away. Honestly, not even a third world dictator would have the balls to do this.

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous."
-V

...and join this Facebook group:
http://georgetown.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13655655529&ref=mf

Simple solution: randomize the candidate orderings across ballots next time.

Requiring voters to use all rankings should not have affected the result, even though voters may feel burdened by the requirement. (That is the norm in foreign countries, but not in US cities using IRV.)

This is pathetic! I am honestly disgusted with the whole process and I do not know what to say about GUSA anymore. They are making us revote because the establishment's choice lost. JUST BECAUSE PAT AND JAMES DID NOT WIN WE ARE ALL VOTING AGAIN!

I ask that the election commissioner and those in the senate who voted against upholding the ballot as it stood, should be asked to RESIGN.

It seems these overly-ambitious, resume-building officials have already been corrupted with the dishonesty and lack of integrity that define so many of our nations' politicians.

My voice has not been heard and I ask that my GUSA senator step down!

Erm, considering the Senators didn't know who had actually won before they voted to accept or deny the certification, it seems a rather tall tale to suppose they voted to engineer the results.

Swiftboater is right. HOYA FOR TRUTH, it's kind of a stretch to say that they voted, not knowing the results, to reject the results because they... thought? that "their" candidate didn't win.

I know some of the people in the GUSA Senate and I am pretty sure that basically every campaign had supporters in the GUSA Senate. I don't think there is an "establishment" candidate and even if there were the runoff was endorsed by the election people and the candidates it seems.

If the election commission and all the candidates support a runoff and there's evidence that the election was troubled due to the ballots/weird complex IRV system, I dunno what they couldve done other than do the runoff. Seems like a fair way to handle it.

Perhaps let's stop with the ignorant assumptions and conspiracy theories? If this election is ruined it'll be because of crazy people like you, HOYA FOR TRUTH, trying to turn this fairly simple thing into a conspiracy. Jesus H. Christ grow up and stop being so melodramatic. The right candidate will win the runoff and then everything will be fine.

In sports news, Georgetown's wins over Syracuse and Villanova will have to be replayed because two points is just too close of a margin.

I'm pretty sure none of you know a single thing about what the Election Commission is, how it's formed, and which random student group is basically forced to run this mess of a student government, for no other reason than that NO ONE else would do it. The IRV system was created by GUSA and implemented the way GUSA wanted it. The Election Commission is under a completely different student group that gets saddled with this ridiculous responsibility b/c no one wants the job, and it does the best job it can trying to implement and oversee an obnoxious system that is USUALLY involving obnoxious people.

No wonder everyone says GUSA does nothing... "Out of the 35 student association senators, 16 voted to deny certification of the election results. Two voted to affirm the results, three abstained and 14 were not present." 14... out of 35 people in the current student senators weren't present at that meeting? Didn't they run for this position? By running, aren't we to assume that they WANT to be there? These numbers tell me otherwise. Thats pretty pathetic.

I do believe that the Senate did the right thing in this situation. However, to say that the Senators did not know the results of the election is a lie. The Election Commission, perhaps by mistake, told the candidates before the Senate meeting the results. I am guessing in the hour between the results be given to the candidates and the Senate meeting, this information was spread to many of the GUSA Senators. Therefore, I think it is plausible to say that the fact that the "right" candidate didn't win in the eyes of many of the Senators (Senators who have a far too vested interest in the situation, considering the little time they have left as Georgetown Undergraduate Students) has influenced the vote of the Senate. In any case, people say that this has destroyed all faith in GUSA is simply an uneducated statement. These election results have nothing to do with the effectiveness of the body. If you want to complain about the ineffectiveness of GUSA, perhaps you should target some real points of contention and not these elections. Have we forgotten that our own United States have had election issues in the past decade, yet has still persevered?

I disagree with those who say that GUSA's problems stem from student "apathy." There are plenty of student groups and coalitions that have been very active over my last four years at Georgetown. In almost every case of substantial changes that I've seen during this time (e.g., the living wage policy, LGBTQ reforms, etc.) it has come without substantial support from GUSA (or, at least, after-the-fact support).

The truth of the matter is that students don't need a complex and confusing hierarchy of "student leaders" in order to create meaningful change. When we organize ourselves and fight for our own concerns, we're much more likely to "get involved" and stay committed to whatever cause it may be. We don't need to sit on someone else's committee or wait for the giant three-toed sloth of Georgetown's bureaucratic processes to "respond" to GUSA's efforts. If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. It's OK to rock the boat once in awhile.

What a complete joke. GUSA should be ashamed of itself. If they want to admit that the ballot was horrible, they should have all the candidates back on the new ballot with a new system.

It's pretty obvious who GUSA wants to be the next president/ vice-president.....

Tremendously unfair and biased.

I agree that if we are to revote, all of the candidates should be on the ballot. It makes no sense to have a runoff on the top 4 candidates when the results were thrown out given the alphabetical order issue...one would think that should affect all candidates, and even more so those on the bottom of the ballot. If the GUSA Senate can not accept the results (which I think is ludicrous to begin with), then there should be an entirely new election featuring all candidates.

I can't wait for a new "Dissolve GUSA" movement. There's a petition I'd GLADLY sign.

I think the reason for limiting the runoff to 4 tickets were the following:

1. There were two clumps of tickets: ones receiving 400-650 votes in the first round, and ones receiving less than 150 votes in the first round. In the first round, alphabetical listing probably had a minimal effect, and the 400-650 vote tickets were found at the top, middle, and bottom of the ballot. So, there was a clear differentiation between the two groups of tickets.

2. Part of the problem with IRV is that, with 8 tickets, it goes very long and the ballot is very confusing. The benefit of a non-instant runoff (non-I RV) is that it narrows down the candidates on the ballot and provides a more manageable election. If we were to have a runoff with all 8 tickets, it wouldn't BE a runoff -- it'd be a revote. And, given an analysis of the first vote, there is no need for another vote so much as there is a need for a runoff.

Ultimately I think all of the candidates accepted the judgment on separating the top four from the bottom four since there was a very clear delineation. The purpose of the runoff is NOT to hold a new election, but to clarify the winners among the competitive candidates.

From the few people who have spoken to me about this who were not affiliated with any of the campaigns, it seems like most people appreciate the ability to have a runoff vote and that most people recognize the flaws in the first ballot.

I will keep this brief.

I was there at the meeting on Monday night at which we voted to de-certify the election. I was there for the entire three-hour debate. I participated actively, and I witnessed more other Senators participate in that debate than in any other this whole year.

I was one of the Senators who voted to de-certify the election. And not to propose an "establishment" candidate, for those who may think as much.

To be straightforward with you, there is NO "establishment" candidate. Some think Pat and James are such, and they do have the support of some Senators. But Brian Kesten, who is one of the candidates for Vice President, is himself a GUSA senator and also has many friends in the Senate. I myself helped out on the campaign of David Dietz and Tyler Stone, and DW Cartier and Andrew Rugg have a substantial number of friends (many from the Philodemic Society alone) who are also GUSA Senators.

So please, facebook me or send me an e-mail and I would be glad to talk to any and all about this further.

Matt Wagner
GUSA Senator, Harbin 2-4
Chair, Academic Affairs Committee
Finance and Appropriations Committee

It seems to me that GUSA has made a decision based on an inadequate understanding of the difference between correlation and causation. Simply because the candidates whose tickets were listed at the bottom of the ballot received a greater number of low-preference rankings does not mean that these rankings were earned unfairly. The beauty of IRV is that, in theory, the nuances of each individual voter's preferences should be reflected in the result. The fact that the ticket that won was behind by 200 votes until the end of the race (as Eden points out above) could very well reflect that it was the least objectionable candidacy. The ticket trailed among first-choice preferences, but then it turned out to be less disliked, as well. This is designed to produce a less polarizing outcome that leaves fewer people acutely unhappy with the results of the election.

It is true that perhaps not all voters were intimately familiar with all of the candidates and their platforms, and that therefore it may have been unfair to ask them to rank all eight tickets in preference order. At the same time, I believe that the average Georgetown student is facile enough to realize that their first choice should be the candidate that they most prefer and their eighth choice should be the candidate they feel is most harmful. If a voter was unfamiliar with a candidacy, they should have placed it towards the middle (unless of course they truly supported all the tickets with which they were familiar). It is illogical to assert that apathy or lack of information on the part of students produced this result, especially when turnout was only around 35%. Apathetic students generally do not vote in GUSA elections. It is very discouraging and patronizing for GUSA to assume that the candidates with the most eighth-place votes only received those votes because voters were apathetic and ill-informed to the extent that they would rank candidates in the order they appear.

In the end, if GUSA considers the alphabetic ordering unfair (which I believe it can be, but is not always), then they should have ensured a different ballot ordering system. The result rendered last week was legitimate. Tomorrow's election is not a run-off, as eight run-offs already took place. Tomorrow's election is a re-run of an election with a culling of minor candidates who were considered spoilers by GUSA. Speaking of which, it is absolutely pathetic that barely a majority of our Senators showed up to debate this important issue last night. While this election affair does not completely ruin the already struggling legitimacy of GUSA, it sure doesn't help to build it into what the organization can and should be.

Somewhere in the Government Department, a comparative politics professor is crying...

Although D.N. Peterson does skip some of the important points of the Senate's logic in de-certifying the election, such as the fact that the Election Commissioner received an extraordinary amount of complaints of confusion and dissatisfaction regarding the ballot, I have to say that I agree with him 100% about the attendance of GUSA Senators.

Although this was coincidentally and unfortunately one of our lowest-turnout meetings of the year, that is no excuse for GUSA Senators to be absent from the meetings at which they are supposed to represent their constituencies. There are some GUSA Senators who are habitually absent from Senate meetings and/or Committee meetings, and that is thoroughly unacceptable.

I guess the point of my response, D.N., is just so that you know that someone (and trust me, there are more) in the Senate does care about stuff like that. I have been pushing recently to get disciplinary action taken against habitually-absent Senators, and Reggie Greer (Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee) has been doing a fantastic job of looking into it and working on a solution.

Lastly, and this is to everyone reading, please don't let this sour your impression of GUSA. We work incredibly hard - some of us put in 15+ hours per week, with little or no recognition or compensation, because we care about seeing things done right and well. It only takes a few moments to criticize and diminish everything that we are working to do, but please know that this decision in particular took a long time and a lot of deliberation to arrive at.

It was on the floor of the Senate this Monday night for three full hours alone, from 9:00 to midnight, and a quorum of dedicated Senators stayed to see it through... as did many candidates, members of the media (the Hoya and the Voice), and current GUSA President Ben Shaw, VP Matt Appenfeller, and Chief of Staff Mariclaire Petty.

I think it's absolutely hilarious that these GUSAns are so ardently defending their decision when it was so clearly illegitimate. At least I'm graduating-- have fun, you wankers. I'm looking forward to seeing your various campaigns for public offices in a few years.

The simple facts:

- GUSA had no control over the design or implementation of the ballot.

- There were numerous concerns raised by many, many students and campaigns that the ballot was confusing, improperly stated that students had to rank all candidates when they didn't have to, and were in alphabetical order favoring the top candidates over the bottom ones.

- The Election Commissioner proposed the run-off.

- ALL the campaigns supported it when the EC consulted them.

- The rules for the run-off were written by the Election Commissioner and current President and VP, Ben Shaw and Matt Appenfeller, to ensure an unbiased application of the rules.

So, if everyone agrees the ballots were flawed and accidentally biasing, if the independent Election Commissioner with no bone in the fight shows it clearly affected the outcome (with many voters' absolute last choice votes ultimately going to decide the winner), if the EC, the Senate and all the tickets were okay with the run-off, I don't quite see a huge problem.

very good and informative article, thank you very much.

Last year, GUSA did play a huge role in creating this voting system AND creating the basic structure for the voting system AND ballot.

One quick clarification about the attendance issue.

We typically have between 27-30 out of the 35 senators show up, which is actually quite high both compared to history and since most of the absent ones had sent me emails earlier in the day telling me that they would have to miss this meeting.

This meeting was, by far, our worst attended meeting of the year, and from the emails I got from the senators who had to miss it, the reason is clear: midterms. Many senators had to miss the meeting due to midterms.

And the ones who had "walked out the door" did so generally around 1130 or so, by which point the meeting had been going 2.5 hours and was approaching midnight. Many of the senators who did stay that late or later did so even though they ALSO had midterms or papers due the next day. None of the senators left before we voted on the denial of certification, though a few of them left while we were discussing the by-laws for the runoff election.

So, it's unfortunate that we had lower-than-usual turnout due to midterms, but this was neither typical nor unexpected because of the crappy timing and the unforeseen nature of the agenda of the meeting. If anyone would like to see a history of their senators' attendance, we periodically upload the attendance sheet to our Public Records Vault, which you can find at gusa.georgetown.edu

Thanks,

ES

So the precedent set by GUSA and the Election Commission is to order the ballot alphabetically and then decide that their own decision was unfair? What gives?

Chicken Madness for President!!!

V,

This article is just a temporary one that doesn't put forward all the facts. I agree, "The election was too close" is definitely a horrible reason to deny certification to an election. But for those who were at the long meeting where we discussed this, they'd know that the "closeness" of the election wasn't the main reason, or really the reason at all, for the denial.

It had to do with the alphabetical ballot, which members of GUSA were not advised about and expressed concern about, nor did they review the ballot before it was posted. It had to do with mandatory voting in IRV, which GUSA opposed and in fact complained about before, during and after the voting. It had to do with the fact that the Election Commissioner (who has been doing an incredilbe job by the way), an independent, non-GUSA official, urged the runoff election, and that all four of the candidates agreed to the runoff.

Tell me, if the Election Commissioner and all four of the top tickets agreed that the results weren't reliable and called for a runoff, and if there were serious problems and numerous complaints with the ballot, the listing, and the instructions for filling it in, and if the statistical analysis showed that the end result was biased towards order on the ballot, and if the candidate who ended up winning by a few dozen votes was behind for 8 rounds by more than 200 votes, how would you vote?

The Senate did exactly what it should have done and what its by-laws were designed to do. It recognized the obvious flaws of the process and called for a runoff -- one that was supported by the Election Commissioner and the four top candidates including the would-be winner.

Hysterics won't help anyone. Believe me, all of the candidates, the Election Commission, and the Senate put a lot of thought and deliberation and debate into this decision. Rather than allow a result that everyone recognized as invalid to go through, in this case GUSA made the hard decision, knowing it would cause an uproar, and called for a runoff election with a readable ballot and the correct application of IRV.

It being "a close election" is no reason to throw out the results. Thank God that wasn't the reason.

Pat Lauinger and James McDonough weren't supposed to lose this. Thank god the GUSA senate is around to correct the student body's mistake!

Here's a letter to the editor written by candidate James Kelly during the LGBTQ campaign last semester.

http://www.thehoya.com/node/14887

FYI.

First of all, Jimmy, I think that the article you've posted as a link is not only distastefully written, but is also pretty irrelevant to the train of thought of these posts....

There obviously needs to be greater communication between GUSA and the Election Commission so that embarrassment like this ends. Over and over again I see Georgetown serving a population of 6,000 undergrads with the bureaucratic incompetence of a large state school. The first thing that went wrong was having eight candidates. Totally absurd. There should have been a primary. Second of all, the alphabetizing of candidates and the ranking of these candidates. Aren't there any psychology majors in the senate?

As an outgoing senior, I must say that the most proactive, effective work done on this campus in the past four years has been due to working groups and student organizations, not GUSA. Lack of commitment is evident in the attendance record of last night's meeting. Why are you serving on GUSA if you aren't representing your constituents at the meeting where it matters the most?

This year's elections generated a lot of interest on campus, in part because of the presidential election hype that trickled down to our politically vibrant campus. This could have been GUSA's chance to plan ahead and do something right.

Just really briefly, C.

Student commissions are created (and their staffs are confirmed) by the GUSA Senate.

Working groups, which I am proud to hear you speak so fondly of, also have their student members nominated by GUSA.

Just a point of clarification.

And a reminder to all... the GUSA Senate meetings, which this semester are Mondays at 9:00pm in a classroom on the main first-floor hallway of Healy, are open to the public. Please participate.

I agree with C that the article is irrelevant. I personally think that James Kelly has a good argument in it, though. I think that disrupting tours is completely beyond the pale in behavior and reflects very badly on the groups involved, as recognized by the people on the tour telling them to shut up.

I also agree with C that there needs to be more communication and less confusion. Essentially, though, with the runoff, it seems like there was a primary, and the new format of the ballot is WORLDS ABOVE the last one. Regardless, the point is that in the end it still seems like the GUSA Senate did what they needed to make sure that there was a clear result. I don't think they did it to advantage any candidate over another. After all, the four tickets all get to run and the same person might well win. And if he doesn't win, it seems like the GUSA Senate will be vindicated by pointing to the evidence that the first vote was not the will of the students. I don't know what the job of "certification" would be if it weren't to make sure that the vote allowed the students to be heard.

I don't know all that much about GUSA, but I think that this is probably an oversimplification:

"I must say that the most proactive, effective work done on this campus in the past four years has been due to working groups and student organizations, not GUSA."

Just from reading the papers I know that GUSA appointed students and has monitored the LGBTQ working groups, created the alcohol policy working groups, got newspapers on campus, last year passed a referendum that made finances more transparent, as well as defeated the keg ban last year and got the alcohol policy at the beginning of this year changed. (In fact I believe that VP Olson specifically mentioned GUSA as the group he talked to in the email that got rid of both the keg ban last year and a lot of the rules from the beginning of this year.) A simple trip to the GUSA website also shows that GUSA appoints people to the committees that deal with safety ("student safety advisory board"), the code of conduct ("disciplinary review committee"), the dining hall ("food committee"), the planning of campus space ("main campus planning committee"), business practices ("advisory board for business practices"), any many others including the Board of Directors and the Board of Governors.

I think "C" is right that GUSA is not the be-all-end-all, and maybe they don't to "most" of the work (they are like 50-100 people compared to about 6500 other people) but they seem to have done a good amount with the alcohol policy, keg ban stuff, dining hall stuff (I think I read that they helped get Flex$ and Grab-n-Go), plus they seem to be working on a lot of other issues. I think GUSA does not do a great job of letting people know about what they do, but that's also probably because it is hard to explain a lot of it, it takes a long time to get change done, and it is probably also hard (on stuff like the keg ban defeat) to take complete credit.

I'm tired of GUSA bashing. From the very few I've met, they seem like good, well-intentioned people who work hard and get some stuff done but obviously promise more than they actually get done in the time they're here and with a really challenging university administration.

As for your point about attendance, C, I agree with you that it's not a good thing especially at such an important vote, but I refer you to "Eden S."'s thing above regarding how this was much lower turnout than average because of midterms. And still if they had quorum and more than 20 people showed up I'd say that's a pretty good thing for a "bad showing." It's a valid point but the context is at least interesting to think about as "Eden S" described it.

In response to Eden S.'s remark regarding how this was much lower turnout than average because of midterms, I'm glad to see GUSA senators take their jobs so seriously. Shutdown the Corp, the CEO has a paper. Want money from GUASFCU? Too bad, the tellers have an exam tomorrow. The Hoya can't print today, the editors have classes early in the morning. - the rest of campus seems to do their job despite other commitments. These people can't even show up for the most important vote. Pathetic

"Hoya Saxa",

That's a really, really stupid point.

Every single one of those organizations will tell you that staffing is more difficult during midterms and holidays. Every single one. Don't believe me? Try working for them. I have worked for one and my roommate works for the other.

And they did show up. Seems like they got quorum and by a comfortable margin. That's what quorum is there for, to make sure that enough people show up that business can be done. Normally 30 out of 35 would be considered extraordinarily good attendance. 23 out of 35 as the final tally apparently was, was higher than quorum and shows that they did show up.

Additionally, according to the article it said that nobody in the Senate knew about the results of the election before the meeting that evening. The candidates were only notified 90 minutes before the meeting. Considering that the certification vote is generally a symbolic vote and not "the most important vote" according to past Hoya articles, it seems like you're blowing that way out of proportion.

So really, "Hoya Saxa," that's an obnoxious and petty point that you're making just because you want to mock other people. You call it pathetic, but your point is what's pathetic, making it personal.

So your point about the Credit Union and the Corp are just flat out wrong. They do have staffing shortages. And yet GUSA got quorum in what is typically not an especially important vote. The Hoya gets to print its articles, the Corp gets to sell its bagels, and GUSA got to hold its votes. Your point is stupid. (Notice I am not calling YOU stupid.)

Really, try not to be so obviously biased. You really have to make your arguments completely ridiculous and ignorant to get your point across.

Marc,
I appreciate your comments and welcome a difference of opinion. You've definitely enlightened me on a few issues. Though I was aware of the midterm priority before I wrote my post, I still feel that last night's meeting should have generated more attendance. Senators needed to vocalize their positions on a subject that needed to be addressed ASAP which affected the entire student body.

Maybe the bottom line for both of us is that GUSA needs to be more visible on campus, both in terms of putting their achievements out there for the student body to recognize, and in being more receptive to the platforms of our dedicated, hard-working student clubs. I know that GU Pride was ready and eager to supply the working groups GUSA created with research and feedback.

And in response to your post, Mark W., thank you for letting me know about the Monday meetings open to the public. I definitely plan on attending the next one.

Oops. By Mark i mean MATT!

"That's a Stupid Thing To Say,"
Your remark about staffing at The Hoya being more difficult during exam periods is false. Editors do not take off because of exams.
Also, what article are you referring to when you say that The Hoya reported that the certification vote was usually symbolic? This is the second time in 3 years that the Assembly/Senate voted to deny certification.

I think that the letter that I linked to (above) was highly relevant to the train of threads discussing the candidacy of James Kelly. His comments on a highly relevant campus issue are certainly worthy of being included in the discussion.

I made no comments on the letter, other than to post it for everyone's edification.

"That's a stupid thing to say,"

The Corp doesn't have staffing problems during finals. Shifts may be switched a bit or covered if someone else can do it, but they all get worked. There's no "well we usually have 4 cashiers, but it's finals, so we'll deal with 2 today," or "shut down Snaxa 1-2 because the manager has a final." And an average Corpie works 9 hours a week, some of which are during the workday--not just a 3 hour long meeting held at night.

Midnight actually INCREASES its hours and staffing requirements during finals, and the shifts get worked.

Show up to meetings or get off the stupid GUSA Senate. In fact, get off the GUSA Senate anyway. It's pointless. In fact, just get rid of the GUSA Senate.

Brian and "..."

About the certification thing I'm pretty sure I've heard somewhere that they're usually symbolic, I don't frankly remember if that was in articles I read or elsewhere but I just asked some gusa people and they agreed that typically they're not controversial.

About the Corp and stuff, again you're making my point for me. You get enough people to be able to put out your bagels or your newspaper and in this case the GUSA Senate according to this article had enough people to make quorum and vote. I don't see why that's a problem.

Since according to the attendance books almost every senator has above a 75% attendance rate and more than half have an 100% attendance rate I don't think that you can reasonably say that people aren't showing up and quite frankly it's kind of sad that you continue to attack people without even doing the kind of research that a nobody like me can do just by reading the comments and going to the site.

But again between myself and my roommate we have worked for the Corp and the Credit Union and I used to be on the mailing lists for the Hoya and I can tell you that all of them have problems during certain times of the year. After all, the Corp shuts down for a third of the year. Every other week the Hoya doesn't publish. (I think it would find it hard to find writers to write during president's day or Spring Break or something, maybe even Valentine's Day though who knows.) So both the Corp and the Hoya do routinely shut down, the Hoya does it like 8 times a semester or something and even when they don't it seems like they have problems finding enough people to write articles for them which is why most of the articles are written by the same four people.

If I'm correct I think neither the Hoya nor GUSA people get paid. Maybe neither the Hoya nor GUSA would have to work around people's schedules if they were allowed to pay their people. Isn't that what the Hoya's arg is for indep? Maybe it should be extended for GUSA, many of whom do more than 9 hours per week and don't get paid the fat minimum wage that Corpers do.

I'm not trying to defend GUSA so much as get kneejerk people to defend their own assertions. I couldn't really care less about GUSA but it annoys me to see people beaten up on without doing any thinking.

For what its worth, several senior Hoya editors are paid, but staff writers are not.

The saddest thing about the GUSA election process is that it's the people who would claim to care the most about it who continue to hijack the election away from the issues that it should be about. People like Sean Hayes, who after failing to make the runoff election sent the four remaining candidates an e-mail inviting them to "PLAY BALL!" for his endorsement. Groups like the College Democrats, who based their endorsement on a ridiculously unfair group of questions that asked the candidates to focus on issues that the student government shouldn't have any hand in. And candidates like D.W. Cartier, who sell theselves out and promise such impossible things just to see an e-mail sent out to hundreds of students with their name on it.

One substantive suggestion I have is to lengthen the duration of time between the filing deadline and the election. This will promote candidates who actually have the substance to endure a real campaign. The way the campaign works now, there's almost no time for campus media to report in-depth on the process or any of the candidates and almost no time for groups to make well-informed and well-considered endorsements.