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Campus support comes up short
Programs, fees lack official support due to student indifference
By David Pollan
dpollan@mscd.edu

A general lack in student participation in elections and special referendum measures is affecting the administrative support that campus projects and programs need for implementation.

The most recent example of this was a proposal from the Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board to Metro’s Board of Trustees to raise the student renewable energy fee from $1 to $5.

“The increase in the renewable energy fee is not being particularly well-received,” said Brian Glotzbach, the student trustee for the Student Government Assembly.

A main reason for the board’s lack of support is that its members are not convinced students are behind the raise in fees or how it will benefit the campus.

“What the board has not been impressed with is student votes that come in,” Metro President Stephen Jordan said. “If 520 students vote in favor of it out of 1,000, when there are 37,000 students out there, it isn’t necessarily, for the board, a persuasive argument for supporting the fees.”

The goals of the hike in fees are to reduce Auraria’s dependence on fossil fuels and to minimize the negative ecological effects of the campus. This will improve campus life for all members of the Auraria community, according to the proposal.

Although the board did not welcome the proposal, it did instruct SACAB to hold its election on April 25 and 26.

“I think the board sort of sent the message (to SACAB), ‘You better be prepared to make your case.’ So they’ve been told to do their election and then they’ll come back, I guess in the fall, and ask each of the boards to approve the fee for January implementation,” Jordan said. “But first they have to do their own election.”

Here is where the problem arises. Student turnout for special elections on campus has never been high, and according to Glotzbach, since his time at Metro the highest turnout was about 900 students. Unless the election to raise the fees sees a high turnout, Glotzbach doubts the board will approve it.

“The odds they’ll pass a whole board are pretty small,” he said. “You’ve got to have more students to voice their opinions about what they want done at this school.”

Other problems are the number of elections each year and the difficulties students encounter when attempting to vote.

“When you inundate students with so many special elections, people tend to tune them out,” Glotzbach said.

The board suggested that elections be coordinated with one another, so as not to have multiple elections. Jordan said he believes one of the reasons for low voter turnout is that there are so many elections and that they are too discreet.

“What we’re trying to do is encourage the three student governments to run their elections at the same time and to get out of this deal of having only one place to go vote,” Jordan said. “And if CoPIRG (Colorado Public Interest Research Group) or somebody is going to run a special election like that, make sure you coordinate it with the general election, so the students only go and vote one time and don’t have to be told to go somewhere else to vote for this other deal.”

Glotzbach agreed that consolidating elections was essential to increasing the voter turnout. He added that voting needs to be made easier for students, who should not have to navigate MetroConnect for 10 minutes just to cast a vote. All voting should be put online, so students are able to vote from the comfort of their homes, he said.

The SGA will continue working with the Department of Information Technology to make voting easier for students and to publicize elections. In Glotzbach’s opinion, the best way to do this is through MetroConnect, possibly by having a pop-up that notifies students as they log in to the website.

According to Glotzbach, if students are adamant about seeing things done on campus – such as an increase in the renewable energy fee – then they need to voice their opinions.

“I highly doubt that Metro’s Board of Trustees will reject something that an overwhelming majority of students want,” he said. “In my time working with the board, I have never seen them reject something the students want just because they don’t like it.”