<p>Is there a reason as to why student government elections are often held in February or in March? OK, I might acknowledge that many college students may not care much about student government, if at all, and many candidates running for any manner of SG office do so mostly to pad a CV. </p>
<p>But I'm lucky to be enrolled in an university where student government (or rather, student union) elections are held by week 3 in the Fall semester. The quirk is, we vote for a department student union executive council but each department nominates a delegate to the university-wide union council.</p>
<p>How do you know what you want to see changed as a freshman if you’ve only been there 3 weeks? I think that’s a pretty big reason, even if the rest of the students still don’t care after a few years.</p>
<p>We vote for a freshman representative too… although most key positions (president, treasurer, secretary, vice presidents external, internal, academic, student life) are held by at least sophomores, sometimes even graduate students, since my union serves both undergraduate and graduate constituents. </p>
<p>How effective would a freshman representative be in student government if he could only serve a month in this capacity? Attrition is significant in freshman year (that is expected since there’s a wide variety of majors that are “open-admissions”)</p>
<p>I’m referring to voting. If I’m new to a college, I’m going to be focusing on myself and my immediate needs, not on what I want to see changed at my college via the student government. </p>
<p>That’s what’s most bewildering about your government, that there’d be a freshman representative, given they’d only have 3 weeks to get used to your college before being voted in, and no one would likely have any idea who they are.</p>
<p>I acknowledge that voting this early is not without its pitfalls, and neither is voting during midterm season during the winter semester.</p>
<p>The thing is, each department has different policies. Physics (and mathematics IIRC) may vote for their representatives on week 3 each Fall semester, with by-elections conducted later in the year if necessary, and elections are almost entirely department-specific.</p>
<p>And now, after week 3 is over, I’m a department senator. </p>
<p>Each department has a senate on which students and faculty sit and convene about 2-3 times a semester. For physics, 4 student seats on the departmental senate are allocated to government executives and 7 more student seats are elected at-large and anyone who isn’t an “automatic senator” (president, VP undergraduate academic, VP graduate academic, VP external) can run for.</p>