Student Council officially opened its new University Unity Project poll yesterday, allowing students to vote for their preferred project theme.
The poll will determine the new focus for the Unity Project for the upcoming school year, Unity Project Chair Rob Atkinson said, and will give University students and groups the opportunity to influence Council’s projects and initiatives for the new term.
Outgoing Student Council President Matt Schrimper encouraged Council members and other students to vote and publicize the poll.
“We’ll have a survey coming up starting [Wednesday] through Friday at midnight for the Unity Project vote,” he said. “We need your vote.”
University Board of Elections Chair Alisa Abbott noted that the format of the new poll is different from the ballot used for the University-wide elections in February.
“Since we can’t have a multiple choice referenda question ... we created the referendum question into a candidate question,” she said. “Instead of candidates, we have the four options.”
The four options on the ballot are Environmental Sensitivity and Sustainability, Socioeconomic Diversity, International Engagement and Connections and The Arts.
Abbott added that the new format better allows voters to order the themes according to what they would most like to see as the Unity Project’s focus.
“Everyone ranks their choices ... to sort of create a drop-off system so we can to see the ranking of student concern,” Abbott said.
Atkinson also said the new poll will be more effective than the previous one, which appeared on Council’s Web site following an error on the University-wide elections ballot that prevented students from voting for a theme of their choosing.
“We initially put a poll on the Student Council Web site, but it seemed as though someone wrote a computer program that would vote every 20 seconds, so we had to invalidate that and create a more secure system,” Atkinson said. “We did it through the system that regular elections are held so we ensure everyone can vote once and that votes will be legitimate.”
Atkinson added, however, that holding another poll after the University-wide elections has certain disadvantages.
“Obviously we can benefit from publicity during the regular elections,” he said. “So when we do it on our own, it’s completely dependent on word of mouth.”
Several students interviewed said they were unaware of the new poll’s existence despite Council’s efforts to publicize the referendum.
“Nobody told me; I didn’t get an e-mail,” fourth-year College student Reshaud Rich said. “If it were [publicized] through some type of electronic means, I would know about it.”
First-year College student Lindsey Shall also said she had not heard about the referendum.
“I feel that if they’re going to hold another election, they should publicize it more to get the most engaged and accurate results possible,” Shall said.
Abbott noted that most of the publicity about the new Council poll has been conveyed through electronic means like e-mail. Limited funds, though, prevented her organization from publicizing the new poll to a greater extent.
“Our funds are mostly relegated toward the main voting period,” Abbott said, “so we can only push so many funds for this. We do everything we can to help [Student Council] and we are open to suggestions. As with the rest of the University, our funds have been cut back recently.”
Atkinson said Council will announce the results of the new poll Sunday. Polls opened at noon yesterday and students have until midnight Friday to cast their ballot online at UBE’s Web site.
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