By Noa Maltzman ’18, News Editor
On Thursday March 5, voting began for the New Student Constitution created by the Skidmore Student Government Association. The new constitution was created with the hope that “it will allow us [SGA] to more effectively do our job of creating programs and supporting the policies that build our vibrant campus life,” said SGA President Addison Bennett ’16.
To boost voting turnout, SGA offered many incentives, including giving out free hot chocolate at a voting station in Case, handing out free pens and entering all students who voted into a raffle for gift cards to Chipotle and the Skid Shop. A final incentive to get people to vote was the announcement that the residential dormitory or apartment complex with the highest percentage of voters would win a prize. SGA's push to encourage voting was necessitated by a self-imposed minimum turnout of 800 students. “In most regular elections, we get between 400 and 600 votes, so we wanted to raise the bar a bit, challenge ourselves to get more student voice, and show that this constitution is actually supported by a large amount of students,” Bennett said.
On Friday March 6, at the final show of Rey and Lemay, a comedy sketch group by seniors John Lee-Rey and John Lemay, Bennett and SGA Vice President for Financial Affairs Sam Harris ’15 went to the microphone. They mentioned how their original plan was to come up here and ask everyone to vote, but that they no longer needed to do that because they were proud to announce that 850 people had voted and that the constitution had passed. The constitution passed with 95.5% of the voters being in favor of the new constitution. The new constitution will go into effect the first weekday following this year’s commencement, May 18.