Students cast about 1,000 votes in IUSA 36-hour election

A mere 1,042 students voted in this year’s IU Student Association elections, compared to the 7,716 students that voted last year. While Election Commissioner Brad Allen and other officials said the low voter turnout was caused by the lack of competition, students said they didn’t vote because they didn’t even know the election was happening.\n“I had no idea about it,” said junior Courtney Allen. She suggested IUSA use fliers to advertise.\n“Anything on Facebook would do it,” she said, adding that a mass e-mail, even if the message was only sent through student organizations, would be helpful.\n“(The election) was nowhere near what I was expecting,” Brad Allen said. “I’m sort of ashamed that we didn’t get more candidates for IUSA; the student apathy is pretty frightening. Hopefully, this will shock the campus.”\nHe said there are 62 congressional seats and some weren’t even filled, and that the funding-aid board had four available seats and received only two applicants. The College of Arts and Sciences and the Hutton Honors College were the only contested seats.\nAllen attributes the low vote count to the lack of candidates and competition, but none of the students interviewed offered this as an excuse – they weren’t even aware the election was taking place.\nSenior Holly Borneman said she feels like she doesn’t get as much information now that she lives out of her sorority house, but said fliers and more ads in the newspaper would be helpful.\nThird-year optometry students Andy Yaryan and Zachary Jones also were uninformed about the election.\n“We’re in the optometry school, so we’re mostly on the south side of campus,” Yaryan said. \nJones suggested that candidates e-mail their platforms during the next election.\n“I just really didn’t feel like we heard about it a lot this year,” he said. \nAllen said the IUSA Supreme Court will ratify all elected positions to finalize the election process before the candidates take office in April.\nHoosier Party President-elect W.T. Wright said in a previous interview that his party’s goals include raising awareness about IUSA.