Mr. & Ms. GC&SU crowned

Becky Martin and David Fleming were named Mr. and Ms. GC&SU this past Saturday at the new intramurals complex after a record turnout at the balloting box.

Fleming, a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, and Martin, a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority, were crowned after the women’s intramural flag football championship game.

Ron Lunk, assistant director for Student Activities and Greek Life, said that more than 900 students voted this year, a marked increase over previous years.

The presentation marked the first time in recent history that Mr. and Ms. GC&SU were crowned in the fall.

“One, we wanted to give the reigning Mr. and Ms. GC&SU more time to reign. The majority of them are seniors, and if they got their crowns in February, they would be graduating in May,” Lunk said. “The second reason was just conflict in schedules with athletics. It had become difficult to make our program fit into their basketball game. The third reason, I guess, is just to promote our own departmental programs. That is why we tied it into intramural football.”

This year’s elections were also the source of some controversy, as several groups were penalized for breaking chalk and sign regulations. These violations included chalking on brick and hanging signs on departmental bulletin boards.

Under SGA guidelines, President Pro Tempore Sandy Green was in charge of deciding what punishment was handed down.

“We decided that the best thing to do was to have no active campaigning on campus,” Green said. “The two organizations did not agree, so we had a meeting the next day, and we decided that they could campaign on campus, but they just would not be allowed to do the chalking or advertising. That way, there would be no way that they could violate the guidelines.”

Lunk was also a part of the process and aided Green in dealing with the situation.

“On the front end, there was some confusion because it was never clear on what they had done wrong because the information was not given to them in a concise manner. That is not one single person’s fault,” Lunk said.

SGA President Sara Johnson said SGA is already in the process of reconfiguring the policy to provide less confusion in the future.

“We are in the beginning phases of figuring out how to revamp the advertising policies,” Johnson said. “Hopefully next year they will be a lot clearer because it seems like people were misunderstanding or something like that.”

Tom Miles, director of Campus Life & Student Activities, will personally be drafting the new guidelines.

Also changing next year will be the responsibilities of Mr. and Ms. GC&SU.

“We are trying to get a job description, if you will, with some kind of responsibilities for them,” Lunk said. “Nothing huge. Just maybe official greeters. Maybe work with Fallfest or Springfest. They are an elected position, officially, so they should have some responsibilities that go along with that.”

Currently, Mr. and Ms. GC&SU’s only job requirement is to present the following year’s winners with their crowns.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 21 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry