Reed claims spot as VP of House after run-off election
By David Reese
News Editor

Andrea Reed, the newly elected vice president of the House of Student Representatives, said her long-term goal for the House is to find a way to restructure representation within the House.

Reed, a senior international business management and social work major, said she has not come to an exact conclusion on how exactly to restructure the organization. She said one idea would be to call in a consultant from Florida that specializes in student governments. The consultant researches the university to find the best way to increase representation across campus, she said.

Reed claimed victory by 32 votes in the run-off election against her roommate, Katie Gordon, Friday evening.

Reed received 302 votes or about 52.8 percent of the vote. Gordon, a senior electrical engineering major, received 270 votes or 47.2 percent during the run-off. There were nine abstentions.

Overall, 581 votes were cast in the run-off election between Reed and Gordon. John Billingsley, current vice president of the House, said the number of votes was substantially lower than in past years.

He said the run-off election for the same position last year between himself and Abby Crawford, a junior speech communication major, had more than 1,300 votes.

Billingsley, a senior accounting major, said the lack of election participation can be attributed to the election’s date.

“It was on a Friday, which is tough to get TCU students to do anything on Fridays,” he said.

Billingsley also said the time span between the first election and the run-off was too large.

“I prefer elections to happen within 24 hours or at least two days,” Billingsley said.

Nick James, elections and regulations chairman and a sophomore political science major, said he was told that there were problems with the election software. He said he scheduled the election to give time for the software to be fixed.

Another goal Reed listed for her term was to increase SGA’s communication and visibility to the student body. She said some ideas include updating the SGA Web site and bulletin boards.

She said she plans on creating a community service chairperson and a recruitment and retention chairperson to expand the House’s visibility. The ideas are still in the beginning processes, Reed said.

Reed had won the majority of the votes with 38.2 percent of the vote during last week’s general election in a field of four candidates including Gordon, Bill Morrison, a junior broadcast journalism major and Rodney Thomas, a sophomore religion major. Due to the Student Government Association’s bylaws, a candidate has to receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win the election, which neither Reed nor Gordan had done.

Although Reed and Gordon are roommates, they said their friendship will not suffer and that no animosity has developed between them.

Gordon also said she has not decided what her involvement within House will be in the future. She said she wants to dedicate a lot of time to the honor code, which she said does not necessarily need to be through her House position as academic affairs chairwoman.

“I really want to be part of an honor code drafting committee,” Gordon said. “I don’t know if the representation in House gives the diverse sampling of students needed for the honor code.”

Concerns over the election code were raised by both candidates Sunday. Gordon said she felt during the election that many rules, including those within the residence halls and dining establishments, were not clear to every candidate.

Reed said she already plans for the next elections and regulations chairperson to work on updating the election code.

David Reese