Student Government Column

Student Senate will be holding vacancy elections on Sept. 13 at 5 p.m. in the the Cohon Center Danforth room. The Senate is a great way to get involved in student government and have a positive impact on your college as well as the university as a whole.

The different committees that senators can serve on impact academics, campus life, business, and many other important areas at Carnegie Mellon. As a senator, you represent your college, and every senator gets an equal say and equal vote at weekly Senate meetings. The colleges that currently have vacancies are the College of Fine Arts (1), Dietrich College (2), Tepper School of Business (1), and Mellon College of Science (2).

If you are interested in running for senator, you need to have a petition of 25 signatures from members of your own college. For vacancy elections, you will need a signed physical petition, instead of the online petitions for standard elections. The PDF for the petition can be found at: https://www.cmu.edu/stugov/senate/student-senate-vacancy-election-petition.pdf. Once you fill out the petition, you may submit it to mailbox number 46 at the Cohon Center, or to any member of the Senate Executive Committee.

For candidates who have submitted petitions by Sept. 13, they can come before the senate and give a speech detailing why they want to be on Senate, as well as their suitability for representing their college. Following these speeches, the existing senators will vote for the candidates they feel fit best in the vacant seats. For those who don’t get elected into these vacancies, the senate also offers the position of Member At Large (MAL). MALs receive the same amount of influence and speaking power during Senate meetings, but have more flexibility in terms of attendance policy and required hours than regular senators. Those running for a MAL position will have to submit a filled petition and follow the same procedures as those running for senator.