The Student Government Association meeting at Fairmont State University on March 27 filled with confusion as an election exemption caused the student organization’s constitution to be called into question.
The meeting began with a brief discussion of upcoming election candidates. The confusion started when SGA’s Election Committee gave Ashton Louden an exemption to run for The Board of Governor’s Student Representative in the 2025 election.
Confusion spread across the meeting as attendees questioned whether this exemption was allowed, while others sought to understand how the exemption goes against The SGA Constitution.
However, the election committee decided to let Louden run in the election.
“As many people remember, Ashton came in and put his case,” Chelsea Burke, SGA Parliamentarian, said. “We said the election committee would make the final decision on what we were going to do. We decided we’re going to follow the Board of Governors policy. Since we were not delegated directly in writing, the right to actually decide if it’s just SGA members or not.”
The policy that is claimed to allow Louden to run for student representative is BOG Policy 56.
“So BOG Policy 56 is that the student representative for the Board of Governors will be duly elected by the student body, and they must be in good academic standing,” President of Fairmont State SGA Elijah Dover said.
However, the SGA Constitution states individuals running for SGA office must be a member of SGA for at least the previous semester before the election. The problem facing the student government is that BOG policies are above the SGA Constitution, which would allow Ashton Louden to run for representative. This would also mean that the current Constitution is not in agreement with the BOG policy.
Dover said the next step was to have current BOG Student Representative Riley Neal bring the issue to the Board of Governors.
“They’re going to discuss whether they want to delegate us that authority to elect a board of governors rep. or if they want to keep it as a full student body election so that anybody could run,” Dover said.
Neal said that the issue regarding the constitution will be brought up at the Board of Governors’ Bylaw meeting on April 7, 2025. It will then be discussed at the following meeting on April 23, 2025.
