Elections null, void?

The Student Government Association (SGA) found itself in a controversial situation regarding the legitimacy of their last meeting Jan. 20 at Highland Business Center.

Fall SGA president Dylan Pera chaired the meeting as the acting president. Acting SGA parliamentarian Bretton Johnson said in doing so, Pera was in violation of the SGA constitution because he was not yet registered for classes at ACC for the spring semester. In light of this fact, the Jan. 20 meeting may be deemed null and void because technically it was never called to order.

"In reality, the senate chair David Wedel should have been chairing that meeting in order to make it official," Johnson said.

In the meeting, Johnson assumed the role of vice president through a nomination by Pera and a vote backed by the senators. However, he said after the meeting Pera informed him about chairing the meeting even though he was not enrolled in classes. Johnson said this is a huge conflict of interest for the SGA. He values the merit of parliamentary procedure and said he wants to obtain more responsibility with the executive committee, but on the right terms.

Stacy Moreno was also voted into the Eastview Campus senator position at the Jan. 20 meeting. She and many other new senators and executive officers who were sworn into office were forced to wait until the Feb. 10 meeting to go through the election process again.

"The events that took place on [Jan.] 20 were a shock to us all," Moreno said in an email. "But this will not hold SGA back in anyway. I respect the recall and acknowledge the meeting as unconstitutional, due to fact that the meeting was never ‘technically' called to order."

SGA now has an opportunity to grow from this experience, she said, as well as uphold its obligation to the students by continuing to keep the momentum going in a positive direction. Moreno said by doing this she hopes it will successfully accomplish the SGA's goal to keep order by remaining professional while representing the entire student body.

One main issue discussed in the Jan. 20 meeting was the vote on whether demerits for smoking ban infractions should be applied to students' transcripts. Another involved the new Capital Metro route changes that are affecting the safety of disabled students traveling to and from campus.

SGA director of communications Shane Manning said everything in the Jan. 20 meeting is null and void, but that all of these topics were revisited at the next meeting.

"It is not the goal of SGA to hide anything from the students that it serves," Manning said. "We want to take care of all discrepancies in an open-meeting atmosphere in which the faculty, students and news coverage can witness our decision making process." Moreno said she was disappointed that she might not be able to represent SGA as a senator during voter registration and other planned events but is confident the work of now-acting Eastview senator Mike Wade, along with help from Student Life, these events will be successful.