What: Vote for your college's representative to be seated on ASMSU's Student and Academic assemblies
When: Until 5 p.m. Monday at www.studentelections.msu.edu
• Twenty-eight names are on the Student Assembly seats (including five incumbents), and eight are on Academic Assembly seats.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Student Assembly
• Deals with nonacademic issues that affect student life — university off-campus policies, student-tenant concerns and voter registrations. Also monitors how the majority of student tax dollars are spent.
• The assembly is made up of representatives from campus organizations and up to five students from every college.
Academic Assembly
• Deals with academic issues such as tuition costs, curriculum and faculty issues.
• Academic Assembly holds two positions for every college.
BALLOT ITEMS
• Great Issues — to be reinstated on Programming Board
• Programming Board — to become independent from Student Assembly
• Two ASMSU constitutional changes
About ASMSU: Every MSU undergraduate pays a $16.75 tax per semester to the undergraduate student government, which is responsible for student legal services, campus events and funding student organizations.
• Last year, 8 percent of undergraduate students voted.
"Students just need to be better educated — there hasn't been one issue that has drawn students to the polls (in the past)," said Scott Lachman, ASMSU's vice chairperson for student funding. "I think this year we will have the highest voter turnout of years past."
ONLINE
• Visit www.asmsu.msu.edu to learn about the candidates and their goals.
"We posted the mission statements online because we want people to research their candidates before they made a decision," ASMSU Director of Communications Mark Fitzgerald said. "I don't know why this hasn't been done in the past because we definitely have the capability."
Also, the Council of Graduate Students' six executive board positions will be filled today. Eligible voters include the current five-member executive board and other COGS representatives.
The council uses a parliamentary system where every representative, voting or nonvoting members, have the chance to become a nominee the day of elections.
"We encourage as many people from different organizations and programs to get involved," current COGS president Brad Love said. "We put a lot of input into MSU's policies and the community to try and do positive things for students."
Sean Ely contributed to this report.
Students on the ballot for ASMSU elections:
Academic Assembly (every college has two available seats)
Agriculture and Natural Resources: Henry Reinart
Arts and Letters: None
Business: None
Communication Arts and Sciences: None
Education: Megan Thoma
Engineering: None
James Madison: David Mindell, Jennifer Houghton
Natural Sciences: Amanda Venettis, Thomas J. Prebish, Sasha Fawaz
Nursing: None
Social Science: Maryanna Burleson
Student Assembly
(with college and available number of seats)
Agriculture and Natural Resources (3): Martin Villarreal, Huzaifah Nasir
Arts and Letters (3): Piper Marunick
Business (5): Srinivas Sakamuri*, Harry Wang*, Garry Hartlieb
Communication Arts and Sciences (3): Juan Carlos Elizalde*, Natalie Venuto, Ashley Rittenhouse
Education (3): None
Engineering (3): Chris Miller, William Burgers II, Kevin McAlpine
James Madison (2): Bradley McDonald*, Leo Madarang, Mark Bassily, Rachel J. Funk, Osman Elfaki
Natural Sciences (5): Emily Jackson, Megan Bardwell, Sarah Skrbina
Nursing (2): None
Social Science (5): Christopher Kulesza, Alex Freitag, Stuart Kelly, Ben Morlock, David Schmidt, Michael Webber, Michael Leahy*, Andrew Kraszewski
*incumbent
There are four proposals on the ballot, as well. They include:
• Reinstating Great Issues, a group recently removed from Programming Board for bringing controversial speaker Joe Carr to campus, from the Board.
• A vote to mandate that Student Assembly does research into becoming independent of Programming Board.
• Two ASMSU constitutional changes.
On www.asmsu.msu.edu, students can learn about the candidates and enter for a chance to win one of 20 Apple iPod Nanos.
Source: ASMSU
