Best of luck to my colleague at UNC Greensboro. I’m pulling for ya John.
From the UNCG Student Newspaper, the Carolinian:
SGA temporarily loses affiliation, nullifies elections
Stephanie Patton
Last week’s SGA Senate meeting was spent discussing issues SGA has recently encountered, including a temporary loss of the group’s affiliation and the nullification of the recent SGA elections.
The SGA recently lost its affiliation for nearly two weeks when President John Bryant failed to turn in affiliation-related paperwork. Bryant stated that he is not quite sure how the error occurred.
“I believe that I turned it in,” said Bryant regarding the necessary forms to apply for re-affiliation. “I don’t know why it wasn’t [turned in].”
Bryant did not inform members of the SGA or the organizations funded by the SGA of the predicament until the SGA meeting on March 18. The organizations lost funding for those two weeks, and the lack of money is how some came to realize they were no longer affiliated with the university.
“The reason that it was not brought up and talked about with the entire student body before,” explained Bryant, “was because I thought it could get handled quickly.”
Bryant sent an apology letter explaining the predicament and the SGA regained its affiliation, but is now on probation until Spring 2009. If the SGA has another violation during the probation, a council set up by Student Affairs will become the student government. This is the second time the SGA has lost affiliation, as far as Bryant can remember, he said.
The UNCG SGA was also placed on probation in February of 2007, after failing to inform the university 12 hours before holding an event on campus. That probation carried
Contested election
In addition to affiliation complications, the SGA was also dealing with the trouble of this year’s elections. Elections were held the first week of March, but the results have been nullified.
As stated in a letter drafted by Mekia Taylor, Elections and Publicity Committee chair, the elections will be re-done. The decision was made after members of the Elections and Publicity Committee felt the integrity of the elections was compromised. According to Taylor, two candidates were left off the ballot during a process of rearranging some candidates in order to give them a better chance of being elected. In addition, emails explaining the voting process were not sent out to all UNCG students due to technological difficulties, and some candidates allegedly failed to remove campaigning materials after campaigning had ended.
Read the rest of the story at the Carolinian
