The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College revised their student election bylaws for the 2019 election after an issue during the 2018 election.
During last year's election a complaint was made against Chance Salway, the current ASFLC president, claiming that he was actively campaigning in the Student Union Building against campaign rules stated on page 5 of the 2018 election packet.
Salway’s executive team was disqualified as a result of that violation even though his team had won the election by a margin of 35 votes.
After a student court convened in response to the disqualification, the court found in favor of Salway’s executive team, confirming him as student body president for the 2018-2019 academic year.
To prevent an episode like this from happening again, changes have been made to the 2019 ASFLC elections packet.
“The election last year exposed some serious flaws that we wanted to fix this year and avoid episodes like that from happening again,” Josh Emerson, ASFLC election’s chair said.
These include changes to where candidates can campaign and protocol if an ASFLC Student Court is convened. Candidates are now allowed the right to actively solicit in the Student Union Building.
ASFLC has also added a complaint form to the elections packet if someone wants to lodge a complaint.
Emerson says that there was not a paper trail for the complaint process before. This form will start a paper trail of misconduct from the beginning.
Sub-section b of the 2019 campaign rules states that if a candidate is unsatisfied with the decision made by the ASLFC Election Committee based on merit they may file an appeal to the ASFLC Student Court within 24 hours of the committee's decision.
Emerson says that this is a new policy that came out of last year.
“We didn’t really have a good appeals process,” Emerson said.
Until this year Student Court appeals could be appealed to the FLC administration, but an update to the election bylaws prohibits a candidate from appealing to the administration after the ASFLC Student Court makes their decision.
At a candidate’s meeting on Mar. 14, Mark Mastalski, the director of the Terry R. Bacon Leadership Center at FLC said that all parts of the ASLFC elections process is governed by ASFLC and that the college is not affiliated with it in any way.
There are two executive teams running for election this year.One team consists of current ASFLC senator Becca Judy for president and Neali Ferrell, the vice president of Student Union Productions.
Their opponents are current ASFLC senator Cody Stroup for president and current ASFLC senator, Madison Klearman as vice-president.
Students can vote for the 2019 ASFLC elections between 7:00 a.m. on Mar. 25 and 5:00 p.m. on Mar. 27. The last public forum where students can ask questions of the candidates will be held on Mar. 21 from 1:00 p.m.-2:00 pm., at the fireplace in the Student Union Building.
Editor’s Note: Keep an eye on The Independent for all your 2019 ASFLC election news.