A pair of complications before the upcoming Student Association elections have SA officers wondering how much can go wrong in one week.

The SA will hold a special meeting of the Assembly at 4:30 p.m. today to select a Board of Elections and Membership chairperson, said SA President Andrew Thomson, a senior information management and political science major. The BEM is without a chairperson since officers discovered that Chairwoman Jessie Cordova’s term had actually expired on the first day of classes this semester.

Thomson said the mix-up occurred because SA forgot to update the computerized copy of its codes after the referendum changed the BEM chairperson’s term to one full academic year during last fall’s election instead of the normal SA term, which runs from the spring semester through the fall. The term was modified so that at least one cabinet member’s position would carry over from one legislative session to the next, Thomson said. In addition to overseeing the election, the BEM chairperson’s job is to ensure a smooth transition between officers.

The referendum also contained a provision to allow for the appointment of an emergency BEM chairperson from one of the three at-large members of the president’s cabinet, Thomson said.

‘Its a safety net put in place to make sure we always have a BEM chair,’ Thomson said.

Cordova, a junior education major, said she doesn’t anticipate any problems in being re-elected at today’s meeting. Thomson said he expects the meeting to last no longer than two minutes.

‘Everyone already knows just how hard I’m working for a successful election,’ Cordova said.

In addition to today’s Assembly meeting, SA’s Judicial Review Board will hold a hearing to investigate charges that comptroller candidate Rosslyn Ortega, a sophomore marketing major, violated finance board rules by serving as the NAACP’s fiscal officer while serving on the board. Thomson said while the charges cannot directly impact the election, the review board could assess a penalty as strong as removing Ortega from the board.

Finance board members are not allowed to serve as the fiscal officer for student organizations they represent to prevent those organizations from receiving preferential treatment, said Comptroller Erin Maghran. Because SA’s finance board controls the budgets that receive student activity fee money, serving as a fiscal officer for one of those organizations constitutes a conflict of interest for finance board members, Maghran said.

During Tuesday’s debate, Ortega stated several times she was NAACP’s fiscal officer, Thomson said. Because of this, it does not appear that Ortega intentionally violated finance board’s rules.

Ortega could not be reach for comment.

Published on October 30, 2003 at 12:00 pm