Roughly one day into voting, the three measures on the Student Activities Fee referendum have all crossed the GUSA-established threshold of 2000 votes that will make valid any of the measures that pass. As of  7:57 p.m., the SIPS Fund has received 2028 yes or no votes, Georgetown Energy has received 2021 votes and the New South Student Center has received 2053 votes, according to the GUSA Election Commission. While these numbers give no indication of how these measures are faring, student leaders are nevertheless optimistic that each measure will pass.

FinApp committee chair Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) wrote to Vox today:

I’m very confident all three proposals will pass by a wide margin. A lot of students have invested a great deal of time and energy into these proposals. The large voter turnout reflects this. Each proposal will benefit Georgetown in different and meaningful ways.

Addressing the swiftness with which the measures reached the threshold, GUSA Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) wrote to Vox:

We are ahead of last year’s SAFE Reform pace which is really exciting. The polling places in Leo’s should help maintain a steady turnout and reach students who normally don’t vote. Myself and others involved with GUSA will keep encouraging people to vote until the polls close at the end of Thursday. Students have been actively participating in the process and spreading the word about the vote which has made reaching the 2000 vote threshold so much easier.

Vox‘s guide to the referendum is available here. In addition to the online voting option, a physical voting booth with computers has been set up in Leo’s, and will be in place today through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The referendum will conclude at the end of the day on Thursday.

Yesterday’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association senate found itself preparing for several big issues of the upcoming semester, including the endowment referendum, the student life report, and the executive election.

Poll-dancing

The senate passed an act to install a physical voting booth in Leo’s to give students another reminder to vote on the endowment referendum. The booth would have three computers and be monitored by a paid, independent worker from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the three days of voting later this month.

According to the act’s author, Nathaniel Tisa (SFS ’14), this would be the first physical polling location since GUSA switched over to voting via email.

Besides allowing the election commission to better monitor election analytics, the polling booth would ideally increase voter turnout and help the referendum pass its 2,000-vote threshold to be deemed valid. The polling location will also serve as a pilot program for future elections.Once the voting booth is in place, no electioneering will be allowed with Leo’s.

Speaking of public displays of politicking, GUSA Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) informed the room to expect another giant banner sponsored by a few members of the GUSA executive in favor of the three endowment referendum proposals to appear in Red Square.

The executive’s briefs

During the executive briefing, Laverriere announced the official date for the release of the student life report: February 6. Before then, the authors of the completed report will discuss the findings with President John DeGioia and Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson. He declined to give away any of the report’s findings.

Laverriere also said that the executive had a general meeting about the student code of conduct with several university administrators involved with discipline. This week, they are having a follow-up meeting to formalize the role of the Student Advocacy Office in university disciplinary proceedings. One way it is being included is that the email a student receives about being written up will include on campus resources like the SAO, campus ministry, and RAs.

Finally, the senate also altered existing bylaws to create a three-week transition period for newly-elected GUSA executives to learn the ropes. This transition period would only nominally affect the annual budget summit in that, instead of the president and vice president presenting their budget, the president- and vice president-elect will be present.

The 2010-2011 Georgetown University Student Association Senators were sworn in on Sunday, officially beginning the year’s agenda. While the meeting was heavy on ideas and questions from the senators and light on formal votes, the discussions suggest that many of last year’s issues will rear their heads soon.

Chris Pigott (COL’12), last year’s Senate Vice-Speaker, moderated the meeting.

Student Activities Fee and Endowment Reform (SAFE Reform)

In 2001, a system was set up to allocate half of the Student Activities fee to student organizations, club sports, and the media board. The other half went to an endowment, which, according to the plan, would eventually become self-sustaining and eliminate the need to collect a student activities fee from each student on a semester basis.

At the current interest rates, however, GUSA representatives are concerned that students wouldn’t see the effect of the endowment plan until at least 2025. Let’s hope that the Finance and Appropriation Committee looks into the endowment money and creates a plan to speed up the process.

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“With no power comes no responsibility.”

Although promising to live by these words that he attributed to Spiderman, Bill Nelson (COL ’11) conceded his run for the Georgetown University Student Association on Saturday.

Nelson, who recently also lost in his bid for Mr. Georgetown, ran on the sole platform of dissolving GUSA with the endorsements of three former presidents.

In his concession, Nelson addressed those whom he met on his 40-hour long write-in campaign who told him that they don’t know what GUSA does. Nelson told them to start reading the newspaper more so that they aren’t “such uninformed idiots.” He hopes that then they’ll “maybe have a freakin’ clue.”

While his write-in campaign was for one of the off-campus positions, Nelson received 19 votes out of the 970 total votes cast for the at-large senate seat. He was not listed in the official GUSA Election Commission results as receiving any votes for the off campus spot.

Although he lamented his inability to be able to dismantle GUSA from the inside, Nelson holds out hope that something will go wrong with the election results once again so that he can run a second campaign to dissolve GUSA.

After the jump, we’ve republished Nelson’s concession speech.

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GUSA election results are in, people. Time to get excited!

After a long week of election previews—and thankfully, plenty of excuses to bring out our favorite blingee—the GUSA Election Commission announced the winners of the elections.

Vox congratulates all of the winners. (And for those of you who ran failed write-in campaigns, take solace in the fact that your comments entertained us.)

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To help foster a (hopefully) more informed student body for this year’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate Elections, Vox invited all candidates to complete a short questionnaire regarding their candidacies. And, to our surprise, some of them even responded!

Voting began last night and will close shortly after midnight. Students are allowed to vote in their respective districts and for the at-large positions. If your district is sans a candidate, or you don’t want to vote for those listed, write-ins are allowed. (And write-in campaigns do exist.)

Earlier this week, we covered the freshmen candidates and the candidates in the other dorms, and now we’ve got the rest.

[Editor’s note: The questions for transfers differ slightly from the questions for students who were at Georgetown students.]

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