Associated Students plans to re-launch their website in time to offer online voting for the upcoming election, said AS and Student Missionary Union office manager senior Amy Howard. Other changes include revised campaign guidelines and an earlier election date of February, instead of March like previous years.

Virtual Voting

University Communications and Marketing is designing the new AS site with a voting feature so students can place their vote from any location, starting at midnight on Feb. 20 and ending at 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 21, Howard said.

“That’s really exciting because it will give students a chance just to vote from their dorm room and hopefully we’ll have a bigger turnout than we did in the past,” Howard said.

Last year, 1,356 students voted in the elections, Howard said. This is approximately 32 percent of the 2011-2012 student population of 4,271, according to the admissions website.  

AS will also have a voting table available for a couple hours on both election days to catch students out and about on campus, though they are still determining the time and place, Howard said.

New guidelines level the playing field

In addition to the new voting system, AS introduced clearer rules and guidelines to make the overall experience of AS elections fair and enjoyable for everyone involved, said Laura Igram-Edwards, director of Student Programming and AS adviser. 

“We don’t want this to become a big, difficult, drama-filled situation,” she said. “The goal is to make it accessible and make it fun.”

Igram-Edwards also said that the AS board clarified due to the detailed rules concerns about candidate teams who were already involved with AS having an unfair advantage over non-AS students since they would be more familiar with the rules.

In reference to the disqualification of two student candidate teams for early campaigning last year, Howard said the AS board saw a need for further clarification of the rules to avoid a similar situation in the future.

“We realized that there was stuff that kind of needed to be rethought and reevaluated to see how we could make the process easier for future candidates, as well as how to make it better for the Biola community at large,” Howard said.

Expectations for campaign week

The new guidelines clarify the rules surrounding public advertising of campaigns so that candidates do not mistakenly announce their campaign prior to campaign week, as it is forbidden, Igram-Edwards said. She said that AS campaign week officially begins Feb. 13 and continues through Feb. 19, about a month earlier than usual.

The set length of campaign week will prevent unfair advantages and keep candidates from overwhelming the student body, Igram-Edwards said.

“If there’s oversaturation on campus, it would get to be too much. It would be fatiguing for students to have to see and listen to, and fatiguing for the candidate teams,” she said.

An election video announcing the AS and SMU candidates will premiere on Friday, Feb. 15 at chapel and will be available to view on the AS and SMU Facebook pages, Howard said.

In addition, the AS and SMU Debate and Meet and Greet is set for Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. at the Fireplace Pavilion, Igram-Edwards said.

AS hopes to attract more leaders earlier in semester

The earlier election date also provides AS with the opportunity to recruit student leaders during the same time as other positions such as resident advisers and Student Orientation Services leaders, Igram-Edwards said.

Training for the staff that is hired post-elections, which started start during the end of the semester in previous years, will also happen earlier, Igram-Edwards said.

She also said that AS hopes the earlier election and subsequent hiring will attract more applicants before the rush of the semester takes hold.

“People are back, they’re fresh, and there’s also hiring for other student leaders happening right now … we want to be in the running for all the best student leaders on campus,” Igram-Edwards said.