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RyeSAC remedies election oversight

By Allan Woods

RyeSAC will add two seats to its board of directors after a staffer discovered an administrative blunder committed during last year’s elections denied students in the faculties of community services and business adequate say into the student government’s affairs.

The faculty of community services, which currently has two seats on the board, will now have three. The faculty of business, which had three seats, will now have four elected representatives.

Each program is allotted seat on the board for every 1,100 students enrolled in the program.

RyeSAC president Odelia Bay said the error was discovered when a staff member was collecting information for the Nov. 20 semiannual general meeting (SAGM),

Last year’s chief returning officer, Allan Craigie, made the mistake, which was realized until recently because enrolment statistics used to decide how many seats a faculty should have were shredded shortly after the election.

“There was no recognition of a problem [at the time of the elections],” Bay said. “[The RyeSAC executive] met about the issue as soon as the mistake was realized.”

As a result of the error, a proposal to change the representation bylaw so that there is an equal number of seats for each program has been delayed. The proposal was to be brought up at the SAGM.

Bay denied the speedy move to correct the error was designed to quell recent unrest caused by Students Against RyeSAC, an anonymous group protesting the student government’s leftist leanings.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” she said. “We feel we have a duty to ensure people are being represented in accordance with the bylaws.”

The elections were tainted after Craigie was given an incomplete list of information technology students eligible to vote, a blunder that ITM student Christopher West blamed for his last-place finish.

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