The University of Rhode Island’s Student Senate closed its election last Wednesday after two days of voting for positions including next year’s president.
According to at-large senator William Rider, the election was a success in terms of technology but it had a low turnout.
“Our voting mechanism was good,” Rider said. “Voter turnout is a whole other question.”
While numbers are not exact, the election had around 400 students voting in it, which is around the average for the student elections, according to Senate moderator Christopher Bove.
This election is coming off a year in which Bove said the Senate did not have a lot of huge arguments from within the Senate compared to previous years, as coming off a pandemic, they were more united.
According to Campus Affairs Chair Emily Gamache, there were hiccups with the link, as many of her friends could not vote. Bove also mentioned that this hiccup happened, but was fixed by the administrator quickly.
“It was just a delay of a few hours,” Bove said. “No one’s going to vote at 2 a.m. so it wasn’t a huge deal.”
Rider said that the Senate was not surprised by the low turnout. According to him, especially during the pandemic, student engagement became much lower and he is hoping the senate can do more to get students more involved as time goes on.
Bove also said that another reason that there was not as large of a turnout was due to the fact that there were no questions on the ballot that would immediately appeal to the student voice.
“Under the Nick Marrota presidency, which happened the year before I got here, there was a massive turnout because there was a ballot referendum about making ‘Sea Sic,’ the club sports and intramural committee, their own budget outside of the Senate,” Bove said.
He mentioned that there were only some constitutional amendments that really appealed more to the Senate on ballet.
Bove mentioned that many people have the wrong idea of a Student Senate.
“A lot of people see the Senate as another club for the overzealous political kids and that’s not true,” Bove said. “The Senate is supposed to have a lot of influence over policy on the University.”
Rider and Student Organizations Chair Katie Siegle mentioned that the Student Senate is also where student clubs run in terms of money and organization, and is a representation of different colleges and students with different lifestyles.
“We have a lot of different students, people from Greek Life, people from club sports, people from every college on campus,” Siegle said. “We have a lot of representation and I think that speaks to how important the Senate is and, even if people do not know who we are a lot of the time, we do a lot of things behind the scenes that do benefit the student body.”
At-large Senator Grace Summerson also weighed in, saying that many people may think it is just a political group and that is not the case, it is meant to serve the students.
While the seat selections have not been finalized due to some senators winning multiple seats, Rider and Bove both mentioned that more freshman senators signed up than usual during this semester, and while it has not been officially counted yet, the next President and Vice President will be Chairs Grace Kiernan and Emily Gamache, who ran unopposed.