SAMANTHA BLONS
Staff Writer
Polls close tomorrow at 8 a.m. for SGA online elections. Pepperdine students can vote online at pepsga.com for senate positions from all four class levels, all housing communities and for freshman class president.
The most competitive race this year is for freshman class president, said SGA Executive Vice President Kristen Compean. The five candidates have campaigned on Facebook created promotional groups and publicized their platform statements. Joe Grable, Blake Francis, Kylee Chacon, Zac Parsons and Alex Pennekamp are the candidates for freshman class president.
Students who vote will also elect senate positions, both for specific class levels and for residential communities. In the spring, SGA members wrote a new Constitution, restructuring the Senate. The new Constitution replaced several of the traditional class senators with “housing” senators, elected to represent their respective housing areas.
This year, SGA determined senate races for all classes would take place in the fall, once students had moved into their residential communities.
“It’s more beneficial this way because transfer students who come in the fall will have a better opportunity to take on an SGA leadership role,” Compean said. Each class will retain four class senators, and each on-campus housing area will have one to two designated senators. Four students will serve as off-campus housing senators.
Junior Nicholas Sanchez, a candidate for junior senator, transferred to Pepperdine this fall from Mount San Antonio Community College in Walnut, Calif., where he said he was heavily involved in student government.
“I want to use all the knowledge and skills I learned there to help Pepperdine with initiatives and get the student population more engaged,” he said. “I want to represent students; I have a passion to serve.”
The senate race with the greatest number of candidates is for freshman senator, with 11 students on the ballot, vying for four positions.
Freshman Jessica Wallace is among the candidates in this race, and one of her ten opponents is her roommate, Christine Roberts.
“At first I thought it was going to be awkward,” Wallace said. “But we both want to be involved, and I don’t really feel like we’re in competition with each other. It’s more like we’re supporting each other.”
Five SGA positions have no candidate on the ballot. the SGA meeting next Wednesday, senators will nominate students for these vacant positions, then vote on their admittance after they accept nomination.
09-14-2006