Students elected nine members to SGA Senate in the special election held Friday, April 5, but there are still 15 seats left vacant.

SGA is trying to appoint their senators to these empty seats before the end of the semester, but they haven’t solidified a process for doing so yet.

SGA president-elect and mass communication junior Jasmine Barnes said she had a general idea of how the appointments to fill the empty Senates would go, but didn’t want to confirm anything after Wednesday’s SGA meeting.

Shannon Donaldson, vice president of communications, gave a few details on how she thinks the Senate candidates will be appointed.

“Basically, the new president and vice president are in charge of appointing the new e-staff,” she said. “Jasmine Barnes, Blake Corley and Courtney Williams will be interviewing people on Friday, I believe.”

Donaldson also said that applications for students interested in filling Senate seats were due this past Monday.

The process for filling Senate vacancies is laid out in the SGA Constitution. Article X, section five of the SGA constitution states that, “In the event of a vacancy, for any reason, of a Senator, Congress shall appoint by a majority vote, a successor from the qualified candidate pool.”

There are 15 open Senate seats because only nine students ran for positions during the Friday, April 5, SGA election.

Pedro Benitez, economics junior, was elected to the Senate during the March 14 and 15 election, but abstained from running during the second round of elections that required initially successful students to seek office again. Benitez declined to run again because the failed Senate referendum and the addition of the University Programming Board led to a larger SGA.

“The functions of SGA aren’t really well defined anymore,” he said. “I feel like I can make a larger impact on a smaller organization that works more effectively than the new giant SGA.”

Hasani Grayson can be reached at [email protected]

Lucy Dieckhaus contributed to this report. 

Correction: Shannon Donaldson’s quote refers to appointing executive staff, not senators and college representatives. We at The Maroon regret this error.