Elections for the 2017-2018 Student Government Association term are fast approaching. Students elected to serve on SGA will begin their term on April 30 and will serve through April 30, 2018.

Most of the current positions will be open to applicants, save for the freshman student senator, the international student senator, and one senator-at-large position.

“The freshman student senator position opens up in the fall, and the international student senator is the exact same way,” current SGA President Austin Mehmet said. “One of the senator-at-large positions is also moved off [to the fall], and I think that’s just to give a fair shot.”

Information regarding applying for candidacy will be distributed to all students via email by Cynthia Thompson, the SGA adviser. 

Mehmet said, “There’s going to be an application packet posted on the SGA website. … All you have to do is fill out the application packet … that can either then be emailed back to Student Life, or turned in at the Student Life office.”

Once the applications are closed, applicants will be called into a candidates meeting, during which candidates will have a chance to meet the opposition and will be told campaigning procedures.

Candidates for senator positions must be students within their selected colleges or students of the indicated position. For example, only undergraduate students can be the undergraduate student senator, and only international students can be the international student senator.

“The only two that have a specific requirement would the president and vice president [positions],” Mehmet said. For these positions, candidates must be available to serve the full 2017-2018 term, in order to avoid a mid-year transition that would follow the president or vice president graduating in December.

Voting will be held on April 12-13 through UIS Connection. An email providing a link to the voting page will be sent out to the student body, and the results of the election will be announced the day after voting ends.

“[The results] will be posted to uis.edu/sga, as well as emailed out,” Mehmet said.

The new SGA members will publicly transition on April 30, the last SGA meeting of the semester.