The Student Government Association yielded a low turnout for this year’s student elections despite the changes in bylaws that extended the duration of time available for students to vote.
Out of the entire registered students at Bakersfield College, only 314 people cast votes. SGA Vice President Prayas Patel said that he thinks the low number of students at the polls was a result of inadequate campaigning that resulted from unclear standards for campaigning in the bylaws.
“I thought they would campaign more,” Patel said.
Last year’s student elections were held during the week before finals in the spring semester and generated in the neighborhood of 500 to 700 votes. During an interview with The Rip on the first day of elections, Patel said that he had high hopes for a larger turnout at this year’s elections and was expecting 1,500 to 2,000 students to vote due to the extended hours of the elections.
“I didn’t really know it was going on, and I don’t really know who is running,” said Katie Holland, a 19-year-old nutrition major.
Michael Wilson, a biology major who ran for Activities Liaison, said, “People don’t care about making a difference … People only care about clothes, money and cars.”
According to a document produced by the BC Web site, the school had 14,083 registered students on the first day of the 2005 spring semester. With that number, less than two-and-a-half percent of students voted.
Newly elected SGA President Ash West, who ran unopposed, has plans in the works to improve student involvement at BC.
According to West, the SGA has been working on getting its own server to host the student government Web site that would host an online radio station for BC.
“We kinda had to jump through some hoops with the administration,” said West.
With the Web site up, the SGA would be able to build up a database of student e-mails, which would allow them to send surveys that would hopefully provide more feedback from BC students.
West also said that next year the SGA plans to move the elections into the online arena in order to attract more students who are unable to vote because of jobs or inability to come to campus.
The election this year was absent of candidate speeches and debates.
According to West, “That’s something we’ll definitely have next year.”
The newly elected student officers will be working closely with the outgoing administration to stay on par with current projects instead of dropping them and starting over in the fall.