[media-credit id=2 align=”alignnone” width=”400″][/media-credit]

The new student trustee has been elected by the students through the first time use of electronic ballots. They will be replacing Raymond Porras, who had to leave due to conflicts with his workload at school.

“(The Associated Students) chose to hold the election online due to the short time frame.” said Jennifer Neil, Student Life adviser. “We needed to get someone to the next meeting since we did not have someone representing the college for the past semester.”

One problem which hurt the student trustee election this year was the lack of student notification said Jourdan Aguirre, 21 year-old nursing student.

Aguirre described the election as “not very organized” and that “I didn’t know anything about this at all.”

“We had sandwich boards, the light board and emails sent out about [the election].” said Neil about the amount of notification on campus.

Roland Pinto, 38, business major, said in a phone call that this was more due to the students’ rather than the AS, “Our students are extremely unresponsive.”

The short time frame itself was due to a problem communicating with the previous student trustee, “[The Associated Students] had to draft a certified letter to him asking him about his resignation after we hadn’t received it.” said Neil. This delay, combined with the upcoming trustee’s meeting, left little time for the election.

“They were rushed, but I am pleased at the speed with which they put out the fire.” said Pinto, “It was done in an effort to protect our school and our student body.”

The final step of the process, the election itself, was chosen to be held online so the results will be known before the trustee’s meeting tonight.

When asked for recommendations for the next election, Aguirre said, “Try putting something under the stairs like they did for the day of the dead.