Yesterday's ballot included races for the Executive Board of the Amherst Association of Students (AAS) as well as constitutional amendments to restructure the student senate and alter the constitutional amendment process.
As The Student went to press, it was still unclear whether administrative access to an ongoing election would have allowed unauthorized students to view emerging results or change an active ballot, potentially erasing previous votes.
While election tampering was so easy, Silberstein found yesterday's elections invalid and closed the polls with just hours remaining. The Judiciary Council (JC) is now responsible for rescheduling or reopening the election and weighing concerns over proper publicity and the approaching senator races.
Just as concerning, though, is knowledge that the technical loophole may have been open for years. At the very least that means any student with a user name and password could have illicitly viewed the results of past elections before they were officially released.
The AAS constitution requires a 24-hour window after every election for individuals to file election complaints to the JC before outcomes are announced. The requirement is meant to ensure that complaints are filed and arbitrated independent of election results.
It is now uncertain, however, how many prohibited pairs of eyes have been perusing vote totals while they were still classified.
Silberstein expressed confidence that specialists from the Information Technology (IT) department will be able to track the computer identities and user names of anyone accessing or altering the voting page's administrative features.
AAS Webmaster Jason Merrill '06 was unavailable for comment at press time.
Concerned senators mentioned the possible involvement of the College Disciplinary Committee if individual students are indeed found to have illegitimately interfered with the student government's election process.
Treasurer Richa Bhala '07, a candidate for AAS president, expressed dismay at what may have been "wanton disregard for fair play and the sanctity of the voting booth."
Silberstein emphasized, though, that talk of discipline is premature until IT determines the extent of the illicit access. "It depends what was done," she said.
Monday's Senate Meeting
Early in Monday's senate meeting, former congressmen Bill Goodling and Matt McHugh stopped by to offer some words of advice from former representatives to current ones.
Goodling was the first to address the importance of civility in public debate. "It's important to remember you can disagree without being disagreeable."
McHugh also offered a favorite congressional maxim that some student senators found particularly apt: "Everything that can be said has been said," he intoned, "But not everybody has said it."
With that mantra in mind, the elective body set about its weekly work. The largest question of the evening was a new budgeting system brought to the senate by former representative Matthew Vanneman '06. The Club Sports Bylaw would remove teams with a consistent budget from the semesterly budgeting process, instead indexing their budget to a percentage of the student activities fee.
Vanneman presented a thorough analysis of past club sports budgets, but some senators questioned the need for such a new process. "I just don't see the major problem this is solving," said Senator Daniel de Zeeuw '08.
The new process, Vanneman suggested, would solve issues with excessive rollover and team anxieties about continued existence, as well as allowing longer-term financial bargains. Concerns about accountability were preemptively answered by the requirement of spending constraints, semesterly reports, and an escape clause allowing a two-thirds senate vote to revoke a team's budgeting status.
Senator Josh Stein '08 motioned, and the senate agreed, to form an ad-hoc committee on the Club Sports Bylaw.
The other major issue before the senate was a direct discretionary request for the Keepers of the Word storytelling event, brought forth by Danielle Lewis '07E. The Budgetary Committee (BC) had tabled discussion of the event last week for reasons some senators found unfair and Lewis chose to come directly before senate.
Senator David Gottlieb '06, speaking for much of the BC, presented the reasoning behind postponing the question. Lewis had come to the committee with a sizeable $11,000 request, he said, up from just $1,500 allotted to last year's program.
Concerned that such a spike was due to fall-off from other sources of funding, the BC had requested information on contributions from other resources, but Lewis was unable to provide that data. Tabling the request, said Gottlieb, the BC didn't even consider questions about whether an event that is led by Dean Onawumi Jean Moss and staffed by several student employees can truly be considered a 'student event.'
"Why pay these students, when unpaid volunteers from other groups slave to put together their own events on a shoestring budget?" Gottlieb later wondered. "Were the coordinators selected through a fair hiring process?"
Lewis pointed out the event's significant number of unpaid student workers and reduced the request to $6,000, but the senate overwhelmingly moved to send the issue back to the BC.
In other news, Senator Avi Das '07 resigned from the Budgetary Committee after nearly two years and the senate appointed Senator Adam Bookman '08 in his place.
The senate moved to replace Bookman and Stein on the Elections Committee along with Senators Jessica Rothschild '06 and Samantha Siegal '08.