The Undergraduate Student Senate (Senate) and the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) convened on April 10 in a continuation of the previous annual Joint Ratification Meeting (JRM) that was held on March 26.
Creighton Arrington, Elections Board Chair, began the meeting by presenting the results of the elections for the Director of Finance (DoF) and Director of Organization (DoO) positions.
The elections were held on March 12, and received 892 total votes, which was “almost double the total votes received in the last student government election.”
However, Arrington noted that the election faced a continued lack of internal participation due to difficulties in promotion and advertisement, as well as the limited availability of Election Board (EB) members resulting in the student government “only being able to table and accept in-person votes for one day.”
Furthermore, there was a failure to reach a constitutionally-required supermajority during the EB vote counting meeting due to the absence of two voting members.
Creighton also discussed the integrity of the election in light of a violation report for the DoF election, which was filed due to an unnamed social media post.
However, it was deemed that “neither candidate had a direct role in this post,” and thus “was not considered a campaign violation.”
The election results were revealed, with Irianna Perez being elected to DoF and Amanawit Assefa being elected as DoO.
The GSA motioned to ratify the DoF and DoO elections, with there being an additional motion to slate the votes. The slated motion passed both the Senate and GSA, confirming Prerez’s and Assefa’s victories.
Joint Funding Committee (JFC) and Committee on Student Organizations (CoSO) Slates
Grace Ahn, Student Government Chief of Staff, spoke about JFC and CoSO’s new slate process. CoSO is the body that facilitates and oversees the recognition process for Carnegie Mellon student organizations.
The original system began recruitment in the fall, while the new system pushed recruitment earlier to February, with another round of recruitment being planned in September in order to “capture first year graduate and first year undergraduate [students] in the fall.”
Ahn introduced JFC’s preliminary nomination slates, consisting of 16 applicants, seven of whom were returning members and the other nine being first-time applicants.
Ahn noted an issue with the two graduate students who applied to the JFC slate, as they were set to graduate in December 2025 and were thus ineligible.
However, Ahn stated that it was not within her power to reject these applicants. The motion to approve the JFC slate passed both the Senate and GSA, permitting the slate to begin training this month.
Ahn then introduced CoSO’s preliminary nomination slate, with four returning members and six first-time applicants for a total of ten applicants.
Notably, CoSO also faced issues with a graduate applicant being ineligible for the slate due to their graduation date of December 2025. The motion to approve the CoSO slate passed the Senate and GSA, allowing the slate to begin training as well.
As per the new slate system, the JRM will vote to approve the official JFC and CoSO slates in October, following the second round of recruitment in September.
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