ASG Senate was full of debate this Wednesday night, with contentions surrounding an amendment to ASG voting guidelines that would prevent presidents and vice presidents from endorsing candidates running for their positions.
SESP Sophomore Josh O’Neill called for the amendment.
“A lot of people don’t pay attention to the ASG campaign and then just vote on [the president and vice president’s] endorsement,” O’Neill said. “Then you get a system where the president and vice president pick the next president and vice president and it becomes less of a meritocracy.”
People for the change argued that allowing the two most powerful people in ASG to publicly announce support for a team provides an unfair advantage. The past three election winners have been endorsed by their predecessor.
Opponents stated that the amendment would be difficult to enforce and could take away a key deciding factor for voters.
Noah Star, ASG President, noted that he had previously decided not to officially endorse a candidate regardless of the amendment.
After over a half hour, the vote passed with a near tie of 16 yes and 15 no.
The debating continued as ASG moved onto a Senate Representation Reform.
The most controversial part of the reform called to standardize the number of representatives from each of the four Greek Councils to two, thus reducing the number of representatives from IFC and PHA, who currently have five each.
No decision was made on the reform, with voting to continue in two weeks.
Editor's note 2/4/16: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the amendment vote did not pass when it, in fact, did. It was also clarified that ASG President Noah Star would not endorse future candidates in an official capacity. Thank you to reader Amanda Walsh for noting the error.