RELATED STORIES:

PART 1 | Vote details will not be released

PART 2 | SGA to release election vote numbers

PART 3 | Despite assembly vote, election data not released

STAFF EDITORIAL | SGA, show us the numbers

Part 4 | SGA kills motion to release election results

The American Student Government Association is weighing in on the Butler University SGA’s refusal to publicly release its election results.

Butch Oxendine, the executive director of ASGA, said that the association advises its member institutions to release the data results of their elections.

“Student Government election results should be posted at all times, at all colleges and universities, including private institutions. Transparency is wise,” Oxendine said in a comment posted on collegemediamatters.com in response to a story about the Butler SGA’s decision.

Oxendine said ASGA is an advisory organization that trains student governments to be more effective.

Butler’s SGA is one of the 1,100 member institutions involved with ASGA. It was a founding member when ASGA began in 2003.

The College Media Matters story referenced that election numbers are not being released at Butler and raised the question of what the proper level of transparency is for student government elections.

The issue arose when The Collegian requested the data after the March election. The Election Oversight Committee and SGA president Al Carroll denied the request, but an SGA representative brought the issue up during assembly.

The assembly first voted 58-55 to publicly release the data.

The Monday following the vote, an SGA representative made a motion to reconsider.

At the next assembly, representatives voted again, and the result was to not release the data.

In an interview with The Collegian, Oxendine said that although private institutions have the authority to make their own decisions, a vast majority of them do release election results.

When presented with Oxendine’s comment from College Media Matters, Carroll said that, on a legislative level, he is impartial, but he personally believes it’s wrong to release this year’s results because candidates had no way of knowing a release could happen.

“On this issue, no amount of advising or public opinion would make me waiver in what I feel is a question of right versus wrong,” Carroll said.

Oxendine said that issues like this have come up at other colleges and universities, and he has found that the smaller the school is, the more likely it is to keep the results private.

“It’s really their prerogative to do what they want,” he said. “But Butler is definitely not the norm.”

SGA President-elect Mike Keller said the issue of releasing or not releasing results should be something SGA pursues and addresses before next year’s election.

“My goal is to work with the Election Oversight Committee and have a general review of election rules so that this issue is addressed earlier in the year,” Keller said.

While Student Government Association assembly has tabled the idea of having a student senate for now, the issue will return in the fall.

Al Carroll, current SGA parliamentarian and president-elect for the 2011-12 school year, said he is unconvinced that the student senate format would be beneficial, but debate will continue.

Student senates at other schools include student members who represent other students in their grade level or an assigned group of students.

Butler’s current SGA format includes representatives from any student group or organization. Their constituencies are their group members.

No precise format has been discussed for a possible Butler student senate.

Also, no decision has been made as to whether or not a student senate would coexist along with SGA assembly or take its place.

Last year’s SGA evaluation committee and CPA approached Carroll with the idea after he was elected the 2011-12 SGA president. He said it came out of a sense that SGA members had too little to do.

He said developing a purpose for SGA and taking on greater problems this fall may remedy that issue. If it does not though, he said looking at a format could be beneficial to SGA’s function.

“It doesn’t matter if we have 20 voices or 200 if we don’t have a purpose,” Carroll said.

He said a change to assembly, whether it includes a student senate or not, is necessary.

“We’re not being effective, and we’re not working effectively in this body,” he said.

Either way, he said, the issue brings about important debate over the amount of voices in student government and the representation students desire.

“We’re trying to spark a fire in the student body and ask how much they care about these positions,” he said.

Carroll said the many heated arguments against a student senate and the abrupt tabling of the issue may have stemmed from representatives’ unwillingness to take up such a large issue three meetings from the end of the school year.

It is an issue that Carroll said should be taken up and drafted by assembly members and not the executive. Even so, he said there will be resistance.

“Change is a hard thing to do,” he said. “When you start talking about change, that’s where things start to heat up a bit.”