Almost No One Is Running For BBC SGA

Joshua Ceballos/Investigative Editor

The candidate list for the Student Government Council at the Biscayne Bay Campus continues to shrink as candidates drop out with online elections approaching.

As PantherNOW reported last month, no one is running for president of SGC-BBC for the upcoming year, and the council only had four candidates running for senate positions at the time.

As of today, two more candidates have dropped out of the race, leaving the council with only two potential senators a few days before online elections.

The candidates did not drop out because of the coronavirus, but rather due to schedule issues and a lack of classes offered at BBC before the remote learning period, according to Larissa Adames, advisor for SGC-BBC.

The SGA constitution requires that candidates for either campus council must take 50 percent of their classes at that campus, either BBC or the Modesto Maidique Campus, to be eligible to run. In the past, SGC-BBC candidates would take online classes to count towards BBC because of how few classes are offered there, but this year the new computer system counts online classes at MMC.

“It’s not fair for our students if we’re not functioning,” said Adames. “There are not enough classes to meet those needs, and candidates are not able to meet their requirements.”

Nicole Alva, a freshman biology student who was running for Senator At-Large, said she dropped out of the race partly because of the 50 percent rule and scheduling conflicts.

“I heard you have to have at least 50 percent of your classes at BBC, and I don’t know what classes I’ll be taking. They should have more classes here because most of my electives are at MMC,” Alva said.

The other candidate who dropped out, Maria Velez, told PantherNOW via email that she felt she wouldn’t have the time to attend all of SGA’s obligatory events, as she’s starting her first semester in her Master’s program and she has a full-time job.

Now SGC-BBC will potentially be left with only two members in the coming academic year. Adames said she is researching senate procedure rules to see if they can even hold a senate meeting with only two people, but she’s holding out hope for a special election in summer B to get more people.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we hold off meeting until summer B to be more concrete, until after special elections so we’re not creating our own rules by having only two people meet,” Adames said.

It’s not clear if a meeting between two government officials can even be called an official meeting, and if it’s not official, Adames said that defeats the purpose of SGA.

With SGC-BBC nearing non-existence, the likelihood of this council merging with the council at MMC seems more likely each day.

The two councils used to be one student government association, but were split decades ago to represent separate campuses. As recent as 2018, attempts were made to merge the two councils back into one, but those attempts failed when BBC students voted to remain separate after months of debate and deliberations.

Campus Life, the University department that used to oversee the student government, recently merged into one office. Although SGA is now separate from Campus Life, its consolidation shows that MMC and BBC are already intertwining.

Alexandra Valdes, an SGC-MMC presidential candidate, told PantherNOW that if the University administration decides to merge the two councils into one government and she becomes president, she will gladly take responsibility for both councils.

“If administration decides to merge both SGA’s [sic] I think that I am well prepared to take on the responsibilities that exist with properly representing the students of BBC,” Valdes said in an email. “[My vice president] and I created a University-Wide platform that exemplifies what the student body has ask from us as SGA officials.”

Valdes’s competitor, Rose Ingraham, was not so quick to say a merger was the best idea. When a vote to merge the councils came up several years ago, Ingraham said she voted no because she did not agree with the proposed structure.

“Essentially I can’t say, ‘Yes, I’m in favor of a bit of a merger no matter what,’ or ‘no, I’m not in favor of merger no matter what,’ because I think it’s on a case by case basis,” Ingraham said. 

Ingraham noted that if she became president, she would sit down with administration officials and SGC-BBC members to come up with a system that “works for everyone,” such as a system where there is a governor for each campus.

Online elections will take place on April 7 and 8 from 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. each day.