The 42-member Student Senate voted 15-12 against allowing a presidential slate to speak on the Senate floor to suspend the Elections Code so they could run against Team Us on Wednesday.
Team Us was the only presidential slate nominated during Student Government Association's nomination convention Feb. 14. Because Team Us was the only slate running, they were appointed to their positions -- SGA president, vice president, secretary and treasurer.
Team Clemens, made up of juniors Chris Clemens, Kyle McGuire, Brandon Eichmeier and Jared Gilbert, formed a slate Tuesday night because they felt Ball State students deserved to choose their governing executives, they said. They created the beginnings of a platform, the list of goals the slate pledges to work on, Wednesday morning and within two hours acquired 300 of the 400 signatures required to run.
"We think it's ridiculous that there's no competition this year," McGuire, the slate's vice presidential candidate, said.
But because the nomination deadline for elections was during the nomination convention, Team Us had to go through Student Senate to get permission to run for the position.
Senate's agenda did not include hearing Team Clemens discuss why they should be allowed to run so senators had to vote to add the special order of business, Kay Bales, adviser for Student Government Association, said.
Team Clemens' members said they were disappointed they were not given the chance to be heard.
"If we would have talked and lost, that's one thing," Eichmeier, Team Clemens secretary candidate, said. "I think they should have just given us an opportunity to speak."
Previously, Bales said there was no possibility that the presidential slate election could be re-opened to allow another slate to run. However, Bales said Wednesday Team Clemens could run against Team Us if the Senate would have heard them speak, made a motion to suspend the Election's Code rules and passed the motion with a two-thirds vote.
Clemens said Bales told his slate Monday there was basically no chance Senate would vote to suspend the Elections Code.
"We don't know if we would have made it all the way to the end or not but our main focus was just to get another slate on the competition," Clemens said.
Steve Geraci, president-elect and president pro-tempore of Student Senate, voted against allowing Team Clemens to speak.
"We're truly sorry the students don't have a choice,"Geraci said. "It's not our fault that we were the only ones who completed our elections packet on time." Geraci said there is no personal rivalry between the two groups, but it would have been unfair to bend the rules for Team Clemens. Some of Team Clemens' members signed Team Us' petition to run for a slate.
"I like those guys," he said. "They're cool guys. I would have loved to run against them."
Team Clemens said SGA did not do enough advertising to let the student body know they could run for presidential positions. Placing advertisements in The Daily News was not enough to get the word out.
"You can put an ad in the paper, but you really need to go out and put something in people's faces," Eichmeier said. SGA should learn from this experience and inform the students about elections better next year, McGuire said.
Even though Team Clemens will not run for election, it would still like to work with SGA to make improvements. Geraci said he wants the slate's members to get more involved with SGA as well.
But Team Clemens would have liked to effect change from the executive position.
"Team Us was the only one who objected verbally," Clemens said. "If [Geraci] is confident in his own slate. We should run, may the best man win."
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