Matt Petruszak elected himself to the Student Organization Resource Fee Board last week. He received only eight votes, and he cast all of them for himself. The SORF board approves and denies your registered student organization’s applications for funding every year. 

He’s a member of The Daily Illini Editorial Board, and he has written himself onto the spring referendum ballot every year for the last six years. This year, he finally won. Had he not dropped out of his SORF Board position Monday afternoon, he could now sit on the eight-member board as one of the two graduate students. He’d sit there because he alone wanted to be on the board. 

And that’s terrifying. 

The $11 in fees collected by the board each academic year from every student amounts to nearly half of a million dollars, which is, in part, what helps your registered student organization pay for its events and purchases. To put that number into perspective even further, the Illinois Student Senate controls an annual budget of only $39,000, and just this past year, the Black Chorus asked the Senate for $18,390 of that money to buy new robes.  

So let’s say Petruszak had stayed on the board, and he didn’t like your RSO. If his intentions were maligned, he could then persuade the board to deny your RSO’s request. So that new widget your RSO wanted? Denied. It’s already hard enough to get SORF funding, just ask any RSO president. This is a far-fetched example, but it could happen with the current system, which is governed by the Campus Student Election Commission.

This year, Petruszak elected himself to the board as a joke. His win is a joke. 

If Matt’s process worked, that means Jaylin McClinton could have theoretically obtained all 1,149 votes (the most anyone received for the SORF board) if just 144 people wrote in McClinton’s name eight times each.

In other elections this year, individuals that received fewer than 10 total votes won 11 seats in ISS. Ties for four other seats were made up of individuals who received three or fewer votes. One seat for Business and Administration, two seats for General Curriculum and five seats for the Graduate College received so little interest that there will be a write-in contest. Among the 51 seats up for election, only nine were subject to competitive elections.

Less than 3 percent of every undergraduate, graduate and professional student at the University voted in Lucas Frye as student trustee, who is one of the 13-member board that governs the whole University of Illinois system. 

If Petruszak could find this loop hole in the SORF board election, what other inconsistencies, abnormalities or faulty practices exist?

Aside from the obvious problem with Petruszak’s self-election, the process by which we select student representatives for these vital positions is flawed. An election system like this works if and only if enough of the students vote in a truly competitive election. Petruszak’s win demonstrated that a single student voter has too much power, which will be abused if left unchecked.