Senate Nomination Process for Students

Student Senators.  It is understood that the process by which members of the University student body are elected to serve as University Faculty Senate members varies by voting unit. To ensure a fair and open election process in all voting units, the following recommendations are made:

1. Nominations should be made by full-time matriculated undergraduate students and by graduate students enrolled in the graduate school for the purpose of receiving an advanced degree. These two groups should comprise the student electorate who elect student senators. All nominated students must be enrolled full-time and in good academic standing.
2. The procedures should provide that every member of the student electorate at all campuses of the University have the opportunity to place names in nomination and to vote in the election. To facilitate this process and promote wide participation, it is recommended that each voting unit communicate the opportunity to run for election widely to its electorate through vehicles such as posters, email, and social media. The University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG), and the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) should promote the opportunity similarly. Venues such as The Daily Collegian and Onward State also serve as good communication forums for this purpose.
3. In each voting unit, there should be at least twice as many students nominated as there are student senators to be elected.
4. Where applicable, the Undergraduate Student Council/Student Government Association of each college/campus should appoint a student elections commission to receive and record nominations for student senators within the voting unit, to prepare and distribute the ballots, to collect and tabulate the results, and to report them to the University Faculty Senate Elections Commission.
5. The Graduate and Professional Student Association should appoint an elections commission to receive and record nominations for student senators, to prepare and distribute the ballots, to collect and tabulate the results, and to report them to the University Faculty Senate Elections Commission.
6. The election process should provide assurances that voting is restricted only to members of the voting electorate, that each member of the electorate has the ability to vote only once, that ballots are secure and accessible only to the applicable student elections commission, and that ballots are anonymized upon response (i.e., personally identifiable information is not recorded with responses)
7. In case an elected student senator does not complete his/her term, the students in his/her voting unit should elect a replacement or select a replacement from a group of previously elected alternates to serve until the next regular election and notify the Secretary of the University Faculty Senate.

Senate Elections Commission
Revised:  January 2013 (CC&R)
Revised: March 7, 2017