Elections Committee

Chair:    Jennifer Cox

Members:   Kaycee Palko, Michael Fouch, Joseph Pastorik, and Monica Wilson.

Changes to the Elections Process

Improved Representation: Staff Council implements new elections process

Carnegie Mellon’s staff council elections will arrive in April as they do every year, but this year’s structure will look significantly different from elections of the past. Representatives for the 2008-2010 term will be elected by members of their division in order to represent their division, a recommendation accepted by staff council in 2006 to be instated this year.

Currently, the council uses a general member election process, whereby representatives are elected by the entire university’s staff to represent the entire university’s staff. While council representatives are elected because they are in touch with the needs of staff campus-wide, it is unlikely that a member of the Enrollment unit, who primarily work on the main campus, will know the detailed needs of the staff in the Advancement unit, who primarily work downtown. Sheer geography defines many of their differences and further exacerbates the disconnect between already disparate groups. This year’s unit-focused elections process seeks to mend that representation gap.

In a letter to all unit leaders, Jennifer Cox, vice chair for staff council, explained the process. Two representatives will be elected from each of the university’s 16 units, with units defined by the university’s organizational chart in the 2008 Staff Directory. These unit representatives will be elected by their individual unit to represent their unit. Such unit-focused elections will take place every two years, with the off-years reserved for general elections to elect the sort of general representatives staff council currently has. The goal is to eventually have a number of unit representatives equal to the number of general representatives. Under the old model, all representatives were general representatives elected for two years, so it will take until the 2009 elections to balance the number of each type of representative.

The philosophy behind a dual representative system likely stems from the differences inherent to unique units. Some units have fewer staff than other units, so the unit representative elections will ensure that all areas are covered. For similar reasons, the general elections ensure that areas with a larger number of staff are able, through both number of potential representatives and their voting members, to have greater representation within the council.

Because staffing changes sometimes include divisional changes, a unit representative who leaves the unit they were elected to represent will serve the remainder of their term as a general representative. If there was an alternate elected from that unit, they will be promoted to a unit representative, otherwise a special mid-term election will be held for that particular unit. Members of the elections committee will be meeting with each unit leader or their assistants to discuss the new process further and to answer any questions.

Election dates for 2008-2010 staff council unit representatives were announced at the January staff council meeting as follows: Nominations – March 31-April 11

Click here to see how the membership of Staff Council will be changing in the upcoming election.

The Elections Committee is responsible for all aspects of the Staff Council general body, officer and special elections’. The committee conducts the call for nominations, creates the ballot, communicates election information between the committee and the Staff Council representatives, maintains the online election process, carries out the election and counts the ballots.  The committee is chaired by the Vice Chair of Staff Council.