Six nominees submitted for MSU VP positions

Nominations for next year's McMaster Students Union vice-presidents were opened at Sunday's SRA meeting, and six students, all of whom were either on the Assembly or in attendance, were nominated.

Anna D’Angela and Justin Korolyk were nominated for Vice-President (Administration). Lisa Bifano and Spencer Graham were nominated for Vice-President (Education). Jeffrey Doucet and Marc Lamoureux were nominated for Vice-President (Finance).

Maria Daniel was also nominated to be next year's MSU Speaker at the meeting.

Two other nominations were made, though somewhat facetiously, as current VP (Finance) Jeff Wyngaarden nominated current VP (Education) Huzaifa Saeed for VP (Finance), and Saeed returned the favour by nominating Wyngaarden for VP (Education).

The SRA will elect the MSU's 2013-14 set of VPs, who will join president-elect David Campbell on the MSU Board of Directors, at its April 7 meeting. It will be the first meeting of the newly elected Student Representative Assembly.

The MSU Speaker, Simon Gooding-Townsend, hesitated before taking the nominations. While it's customary for nominations to be opened ahead of time, names are not typically submitted until the meeting at which the VPs are elected. The incoming SRA now has two weeks of officially knowing the names of at least some of the candidates, though it's not unusual for candidates to speak to members ahead of being nominated on election day.

More students may be nominated between now and the April 7 meeting, or at the meeting itself.

Earlier in the meeting, there was discussion over how MSU VP elections would work this year. While that will ultimately be up to the next SRA, the current members were preparing their recommendation. A proposal came forward to split elections over two meeting; candidates would give presentations on April 7, and elections would be held on April 14 at a separate meeting. The proposal was voted down.

Also debated was a closed-session discussion period, during which SRA members could discuss the candidates in privacy, without observers or candidates in the room. While this has been a part of the election process in past years, it didn't happen last year. The SRA decided to not recommend a closed-session discussion period in the elections again this year over concerns that it would cause groupthink and cattiness to drive the election.

The video of Sunday's 6.5-hour long meeting is below. View the agenda items here.

Part 1:

Part 2: