Students approved a referendum that will preserve the Mandatory Student Activity Fee from becoming a voluntary fee and increased it by $15. A dozen new senators were also elected at the close of the three-day election period.
Students voted in favor of continuing funding to the Student Association (SA), with 1,640 votes for keeping the fee and 168 to make it voluntary. Students also voted largely in favor of increasing the fee, with 1,320 votes for, compared to 329 against the increase.
According to SA Treasurer John Martin, the fee increase was needed to cover inflation, which has increased 18.77 percent in the past four years.
"Going into next year it will be easier to get club and SA events the help that they need," Martin said. "It'll help the clubs expand a little bit and keep up with inflation, which we haven't been able to do the last couple of years."
Despite the budget increase, SA won't see most of the money until the beginning of Fall 2009.
"For the remainder of this year we will probably have to be pretty fiscally frugal," Martin said.
A dozen student representatives were also elected to this year's SA Senate.
Elected to represent on-campus students were Shanita Mitchell (530 votes), Amanda Jonas (501 votes), Josh Sommer (484 votes), Kevin Selig (482 votes), Jordan Fried (439 votes), and Nita Soma (426 votes).
The number of votes for each of the six candidates vying for the off-campus SA Senate were negligible because there were only six seats available.
Elected to the off-campus positions were Yael Goldman (448 votes), Nicole Mutignani (384 votes), Patrick Stahl (360 votes), Nader Jamal (299 votes), Hassan Farah (276 votes) and Muhamed Hamza (258 votes).
"I'm really excited to work with the new senators and I hope it's a good year," Martin said.
Last year's senate elections were canceled due to a lack of candidates for the 12 positions.
"I was glad to see that there was at least a competition for the senate elections and that different people were willing to be out there fighting for their position," Martin said. "I think it shows an improvement on campus culture, that there was actually people competing for the leadership positions."
SA officials were pleased with the total voter turnout.
"We got a good amount of people out so it really showed the opinions of at least a good part of the population," Martin said. "I was really happy with the amount of people we got out in the amount of time we had."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
