Student Government Association elections are approaching, and with ETSU’s recent transition to online classes as a response to COVID-19, campaigning, debates and voting will be completely virtual.
“It wasn’t a situation where we’d love for it to be online,” SGA Secretary of Interior Nicolas Shortridge said. “I think that making everything online will help us grow, to understand the way that people campaign and the options people have to campaign.”
Virtual or online campaigning begins March 22. On March 24, the student body will receive an email announcing candidates, the process for write-in campaigns and the election timeline.
In past years, SGA election campaigning has taken place at locations such as Borchuck Plaza, the Quad and the D.P. Culp Student Center. SGA President Aamir Shaikh believes in-person campaigning brought liveliness to campus, and he said this year will be different in terms of visibility. He hopes students still engage in voting, and he looks forward to seeing how candidates use online campaigning techniques.
“I’m excited to see how our candidates accommodate,” Shaikh said. “I think it’s an exciting time for all of us. It’s time of uncertainty for all of us. We set up a different and unique process, and the process actually — the unique process that we’ve set up — allows the candidates to be creative to some capacity. So, I’m curious to see how they take advantage of that.”
Shortridge expects social media to play a big role in the campaigning and election process. He said he plans to encourage candidates to utilize Facebook and Instagram live videos for students to ask questions and interact with candidates.
“I think that it will — it will test the students’ ability to be able to engage online, and I think that’s something that our generation does really well on in comparison to others,” Shortridge said.
SGA will also use social media as their advertisement platform to encourage students to vote. Shortridge said they are using a little bit of their funds for sponsored advertisements to run on social media the week before the election, the day before the election and the day of the election.
The town hall debate, which was originally set to take place in the new Cave area of the D.P. Culp Student Center, will also take place in an online format. The East Tennessean will compile a list of three to five questions that Executive and Senate candidates must answer. Responses will have word caps for conciseness. The student body will receive links to question responses on March 31.
“I think it allows everyone involved such as SGA, the student body, the East Tennessean, to learn how our online opportunities for students to be involved, how it will evolve and things we can do to learn from it because unfortunately this can happen again,” Shortridge said. “This is a learning experience for all parties involved.”
Candidates will be advised to record and post a video to YouTube with closed captioning to share with the student body. Senate candidates’ videos can be a maximum of 30 seconds, and executive candidates’ videos can be one minute. Candidates running together on a ticket can combine their videos to be three minutes maximum, with no individual video. Video links will be shared with the student body on April 7.
Online elections will take place April 8 and 9. When voting closes the evening of April 9, the Election Committee will hold a virtual meeting to review and confirm results. Results will be shared with student body electronically on April 10.
Changes and the new timeline were communicated to all candidates and the Election Commission on March 17.
Shaikh said he wants to promote informed voting in this new process, and he encourages students to check their emails in the coming weeks for more information about the elections.
“Without the visible presence of candidates talking to students on campus, it’s going to be harder to make an informed vote,” Shaikh said. “But we have an alternative virtual process for them to get informed on what candidates are running on, what their agendas are, what their goals are. So, just be on the lookout for those, and really make your vote based on those.”
For more information about SGA, visit https://www.etsu.edu/sga/.
