Choppy Seas for Senior Shore?

[![](http://blog.stanfordreview.org/content/images/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-2.34.21-AM.png)](http://blog.stanfordreview.org/2011/04/08/choppy-seas-for-senior-shore/screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-2-34-21-am/)

Current view of the Senior Shore class president slate membership, in spite of the replacement of two members.

Earlier this year, I reported on [the entry of Senior Citizen](http://blog.stanfordreview.org/2011/03/02/senior-class-president-slate-launches/) into the race for senior class president. Now it seems as though a bit more drama may have entered the race, this time for the original slate in the race: Senior Shore. Senior Shore was originally meant to reprise the incumbent Junior Shore slate, carrying Adrian Castillo ’12, Cody Sam ’12, Marie Caliguri ’12, and Taylor Goodspeed ’12 on to the senior presidency (Isabelle Wijangco ’12, the fifth member of the Junior Shore slate was not originally going to continue). However, as of Tuesday of this week, two members of the Senior Shore, Cody Sam and Marie Caliguri, dropped from the slate. They were replaced by Grace Jones ’12. What does this switch mean?

This sudden switch has raised two concerns. The first is the basic question of student awareness: neither the Stanford Review nor the Stanford Daily has written on this issue as of yet, leaving students with few avenues to learn about the changes. To compound the issue, a voter who looks at the candidate statement for Senior Shore will still see the original slate members listed at the top of the statement – only readers who read into the platform learn about the changes. This is not the fault of the Senior Shore slate – I assume that there was something about the elections website that made further changes impossible in such a short time frame – but it remains an issue.

The second is a broader issue about whether slates are allowed to change their membership after the end of petitioning and whether a slate can run with only three members. A preliminary search of the ASSU Constitution and By-Laws reveals almost no information about the class presidents. There seems to be very little in the way of rules about slates at all. There seems to potentially be a broader Constitutional question about whether petitioning for a slate entails the equivalent of registering a name or whether it is tied to the students who originally composed it. So far, it’s left to the Elections Commission to “exercise its independent judgement in: determining the eligibility of candidates, slates, sponsors, Special Fee requests, and ballot measures,” but we’ll see what happens as the election winds down tomorrow.