Monday marked ASMSU’s election application deadline, and the collected number of applications for the undergraduate student government are up slightly from last year.
ASMSUofficials tallied about 23 Student Assembly applicants and 15 Academic Assembly applicants at the 5 p.m. deadline.
Last year, Student Assembly received 17 applications and Academic Assembly received 10 applications.
Melanie Olmsted, chairperson of ASMSU’s All-University Elections committee, said she is happy with the turnout.
“Everything is going great,” Olmsted said. “I look forward to meeting with the committee to approve the candidates.
“I also look forward to seeing a very motivated campaign that will reach out to a huge part of the MSU community.”
An applicant is approved as a candidate after the 15 signatures on his or her application are deemed credible from students who attend the candidate’s college.
Academic Assembly seats 33 people, and includes two elected representatives per college.
Student Assembly elects representatives according to the number of students who attend each college, usually about 50 people. The number of seats will be determined when the organization receives an official census of enrolled students this week.
Candidates are allowed to campaign until the March 12-16 elections.
If Mike Stein enters Student Assembly’s 39th session on April 1, he hopes to snag a seat as a Social Science representative to improve East Lansing and student relations.
Stein turned in his application about 4 p.m. Monday.
“I’m disgusted of other people making decisions for the students other than themselves,” the political science and pre-law junior said . “It’s MSU students’ responsibility to get involved with the East Lansing City Council so that adults are not making the decisions for students.”
Stein got the idea to run for an ASMSU position from his friend who is student body president at Oakland University.
“I want to add a strong voice and personality to ASMSU,” he said.
Mike Mansor said he became interested in the Student Assembly Communication Arts and Sciences representative seat after another representative informed him about the organization.
“I went to a couple meetings and liked it,” said the telecommunication sophomore who turned in his application just before the deadline. “I want to have some say in the student government because it’s too easy to sit back and watch student politics run themselves.”
