ASMSU’s elections concluded at noon yesterday and included the referendum and constitutional changes, which also were approved.
ASMSU President Kiran Samra said she was happy about the election results because she believes it will allow the organization to continue to provide important services to students and advocate for them.
“We work tirelessly to ensure the student voice is heard,” Samra said. “We do a lot of important things, and I really am thankful for the student body, who recognized that and still has faith in ASMSU and everything that we do.”
The referendum on the ballot asked students whether they would like to continue to pay taxes to ASMSU and the MSU Readership Program each semester.
The ASMSU tax costs students $16.75 per semester. An additional $1.25 is charged to students for the Readership Program, which provides students free access to The New York Times, the Detroit Free Press and USA Today across campus.
The constitutional changes students voted in favor of created a new funding board within the organization merging several separate funding boards. This will make it easier for students and organizations to request money from ASMSU, Samra said.
The other constitutional change was to adjust language in the code to reflect ASMSU’s decision to align their funding with the university. They will now be considered a nonprofit organization under the university rather than an independent organization.
History senior Jordan Zammit, who runs a “pseudo-news website” called The MSU Review, said he wrote an article encouraging students to vote against the tax in order to make students aware they had the option to vote against it.
“I would like for ASMSU to lose their tax so they can sort out their organization without playing with student money,” he said.
Zammit said he was concerned about how ASMSU publicized the elections. He said the organization presented the tax renewal to students in a biased way, telling them to vote “yes” on it and handing out free merchandise that he saw as a bribe.
ASMSU Chief of Staff Greg Jackson said some of the reasons students might have voted against the tax were that they are either unaware of the services ASMSU provides or are unsatisfied with how ASMSU has used their money in the past.
Undecided freshman Megan Smith said she voted in favor of the tax referendum.
“I didn’t see it as a big deal ... because you have the opportunity to get it back,” Smith said.
Special education freshman Natalie Schmidt said she chose to abstain from the vote because she felt indifferent and didn’t really understand what it was for.
Undecided freshman Krystina Garabis said she voted against the tax renewal because she’d rather not pay the tax every semester and have the obligation to remember to seek out a refund.
Other students, like human biology sophomore Kyle Bivins and supply chain management sophomore James Newland, said they voted in favor of the tax because they supported funding ASMSU’s services.
