Error delays SGA election,
forces revote

After discovering that all North Lake College students were not uploaded into the eCampus system, the Student Government Association (SGA) had to delay its elections and switch to a paper ballot system for the second consecutive year.

The SGA's online elections were to begin on Sept. 15 at midnight and continue until midnight on Sept. 16. Votes were to be cast through the eCampus system. All NLC students were supposed to have an account on the eCampus system.

Shortly before the poll opened, a problem was detected. Dawn Lassiter, department assistant, Student Programs & Resources (SPAR), said, “It came to our attention that not all students were entered into the eCampus system.” According to Lassiter, new students were unable to log on and therefore could not vote.

Virginia Jones, director of SPAR, said, “Our object in the online ballot was to give every student the opportunity to vote.” Once it became apparent that not all students could vote through eCampus, the elections were temporarily delayed and converted to a paper ballot system.

Lassiter explained that the paper ballot system will be used for a longer period of time to give the students more time to vote. “Voting began on Wednesday, Sept. 20, and ends on Tuesday, Sept. 26,” Lassiter said. It is open for such a long period because it is more diffi- cult to vote in person than to vote online.

Despite the need to vote in person, “The first day went surprisingly well, with 134 votes as of Wednesday,” said Lassiter.

According to Lassiter, the winners of the elections will be announced on Sept. 27. Lassiter said, “The swearing in ceremony will be on October 3, or October 4.”

The delay of the vote has caused some stress for the SGA candidates and for SPAR. Judy Faue, SGA Historian candidate said,“We've handed out fliers and gone into classes telling people how and when to vote, and now that this has happened, it looks bad for our credibility.”

It was expected that the eCampus system would be loaded with all NLC students because it was recently upgraded to a newer version that can carry more accounts.

The current version, 6.2, “has the capacity for 999 students, while 6.3 can carry 9,999,” said Ashley McMeans, eCampus project manager.

However, a problem occurred after the start of the semester. Larry Johnson of the Faculty Resource Center said, “They had trouble with the new system, so they had to switch to the older one.” According to Johnson, there are roughly 9,480 students at NLC. “The version of eCampus they are using does not have the capacity for that many students,” he said.

Because of the smaller capacity, McMeans said only the students who have already taken an eCampus course were uploaded into the system at the time of the elections.

Although it's too late for the SGA elections, the eCampus issue won't continue indefinitely. Mc- Means said a newer, greater-capacity system should be up in the spring.