The gross incompetence of the BOE cannot be allowed to stand. Year after year, election after election, new flaws and faults and mistakes are found within the structure, organization, and actions of the Board of Elections. I have been witness to or participated in nine elections, and have not seen one election run properly, with full fairness and success, or heard one positive word spoken about them.
There seemed to be some promise this past fall, when the Committee on Leadership Appointments appointed some extremely motivated and intelligent people to join the BoE. They came with good ideas and a drive to inflict change, to restore credibility to a tarnished organization. However, the de facto structure of the BoE is incredibly top-down, so much so that these new students were often left completely out of the loop regarding what the BoE was or was not doing.
Much of this gross incompetence is the result of the ineffective leadership of Co-chair Michael Siebert. His leadership, a term I am very hesitant to use, has rendered the BoE effectively useless. He left the new students out of the decision-making process, only inviting them when he needed them for quorum to vote on an issue. His presence at the required candidate forum meetings was infrequent at best. His attempts at promoting elections on campus or working to fix his self-acknowledged flaws of the BoE were non-existent.
It is truly a shame that an entire organization with so much responsibility towards the students and the University is being tarnished because of the ineptitude of one person. It is further a shame and extremely unfortunate for the six other members of the BoE, whose position on the Board is being rendered useless by Mr. Seibert.
On Monday, May 9th, 2005, you will be given an opportunity to effect change on this school. There will be a special election held to vote on an amendment which will eliminate the Board of Elections. It will be a unique election, in that your vote will be counted.
I really wish that working within the system could have solved the problems of the BoE. However, I have been given no proof or reason to believe this is the case. Therefore, I have introduced an amendment to effectively eliminate the BoE and gathered 683 signatures from students in support of seeing a vote on this amendment.
This amendment will eliminate the BoE and replace it with the Committee on Student Elections, or the CSE. The CSE will be held accountable to the Executive President of the Student Council and the Director of Student Involvement. In the by laws, it will read that the CSE's decisions are subject to approval by the Executive President and the Director of Student Involvement.
Yes, I am the Executive President for next year. No, this is not simply a power grab. Here's why: the Chair of the CSE, along with either the President or the Director of Student Involvement, will together have the power to override any decision made by the third. A system of checks and balances will finally be in place.
Currently, the BoE has no accountability. The co-chairs and the other members of the BoE are not responsible to anyone, aside from themselves. They report to no one and therefore have no incentive to perform well. The BoE has left the students feeling disenfranchised and powerless, and understandably so. There is simply no reason to vote when it is more likely than not that your vote will be thrown out in another cancelled election.
The Board of Elections has hurt the credibility of the school. Johns Hopkins is an internationally renowned and respected organization whose reputation is being severely tarnished by our flawed elections system. What does it say about our ability to affect significant change in the world when we are unable to keep our own house in check?
This past election was perfectly characteristic of the BoE and of the drastic implications of the students' loss of interest in our electoral process. The election was scheduled to be conducted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005. The list of candidates who were running in this election was not available until Wednesday, April 20th, at 8pm on the BoE's Web site. This list had not been made available to the general public, the candidates, or even Jeff Groden-Thomas, the only administrator who is supposed to play any sort of role involving Student Council and the BoE. The candidates themselves didn't know who they were running against until the night before the election.
The advertising of the election, also a responsibility of the Board of Elections, was literally non-existent. Mr. Groden-Thomas and other student council members, not the BoE, walked around campus on Wednesday putting up flyers. It is no exaggeration to say that the Board of Elections did nothing -- and I mean nothing -- to advertise for this election.
Now let's discuss implications. The rising senior class had three people on the ballot -- three people for seven positions. There were five positions that no one ran for. I've been told several times by my friends who are not involved in Student Council that the entire system seems like a huge power grab. Power at this school is zero-sum, and if you are gaining power, it is at someone else's expense.
It is very possible that the majority of students don't care about the daily wrangling of the Student Council, the Board of Elections, the News-Letter, the HOP, the MSE Symposium, the SAC, and the other organizations generally seen as being under that same umbrella of Ôthings we don't care about.' But the students should not have to. That's not their responsibility.
It is the responsibility of the people in those organizations to care about the students, and not the other way around. Anyone in these organizations is involved for one reason, and that is to improve the quality of student life here at Hopkins. However, we are crippled without a functioning BoE. It all may seem too bizarre to be true, but that is the sad truth about the Board of Elections.
--Atin Agarwal is a junior political science and economics major.
