Correction appended: An earlier version of this article stated that Education falls under Division IV of Rackham Student Government.
At last night’s Rackham Student Government meeting, members of the assembly reviewed the results of the fall 2010 RSG elections, which saw an increase in voter turnout and the election of 13 representatives.
The elections, which coincided with the other student government elections on campus, took place on Nov. 17 and Nov. 18. Though RSG officials opted out of collaborative voter turnout efforts — in which LSA Student Government, University of Michigan Engineering Council and the Michigan Student Assembly combined resources to promote the elections — turnout in this semester’s RSG election was up from both fall 2009 and winter 2010 elections.
In an interview after last night’s meeting, RSG President Michael Benson said RSG officials decided to opt out of the collaborative voter turnout efforts because graduate students tend to be more spread out than undergraduate students, making it difficult to effectively distribute stickers, flyers and other promotional materials that were a major part of the collaborative campaign.
“There’s no one central gathering point, there’s not even a set of three or four classroom buildings,” Benson said. “We have Rackham students that are master’s students, for example, in the Ford School of Public Policy… (you) have Ph.D. students in humanities or the arts, or social science who would be out in the fields or in a remote library, and scientists and engineers that are working at a lab, so there’s really no good way to distribute them.”
Benson said that instead, RSG decided to pursue different ways to promote the election including a Facebook advertising campaign, widespread posting of fliers on North Campus and e-mailing the entire Rackham student body.
“Every time we sent those out we’d see a significant spike in voting,” Benson said.
In addition, Benson said during the meeting last night that RSG would look to work with other governments again in future elections.
At last night’s meeting Manoj Jegannathan, fall 2010 RSG elections director and Rackham student in the Naval Architecture program, said in a presentation that RSG saw an increase in voter turnout from both fall 2009 and winter 2010 elections, with 563 of the 8,005 total Rackham students — 7.03 percent — voting in the elections within their respective division.
Within these divisions in the elections, 16 candidates contested for positions.
The results were divided among the four divisions of RSG, which include Division I: Health and Biological Sciences, Division II: Engineering and Physical Sciences, Division III: Social Sciences and Education and Division IV: Arts and Humanities.
Three full term seats were elected in Division I, four full term seats and three half term seats were elected in Division II and three full term seats were elected in Division III.
Division II saw the highest turnout with 241 students participating, while Division IV, which had one open seat, had only about 20 students vote in the elections. However, the Division IV election saw a four-way tie, which will be decided by the RSG executive board at their meeting on Wednesday.
Despite the increase in overall voter turnout in the elections, RSG members mentioned that they looked to improve promotional efforts and to reach out to Division IV, especially in future elections.
The representative-elects of RSG are invited to begin attending the official board meetings starting next Wednesday.