Though supporters of the senate proposal have been collecting signatures for more than a month, they have yet to get support from the required 15 percent of the undergraduate student population to hold a special election.
The petition, which is only the first step to changing the structure of undergraduate student government, will continue to be circulated even after the 15 percent threshold is reached.
Undergraduate Students Association Council General Representative Brian Neesby, who is heading the special election campaign, and other senate supporters want the special election to be held prior to the spring general election so that the senate structure will be implemented for next year’s incoming officers, Neesby said.
However, the senate petition would have had to be presented to the Elections Board by seventh week to ensure that the special election would be held this quarter, said Anat Herzog, Undergraduate Students Association Elections Board chairwoman.
Elections are typically held between the sixth and seventh weeks of spring quarter, though the campaign process begins several weeks earlier, leaving little time for senate supporters to force a special election before then.
The senate structure, first proposed last year, would convert USAC from a council of 13 voting members to a structure consisting of 20 voting legislative senators, five voting executive positions and five nonvoting commissioners.
Earlier this quarter, USAC rejected the senate proposal as a constitutional change.
The special election would call for the undergraduate student population to vote in support of or against adopting the senate proposal, and requires two-thirds of voting students to support the measure for it to take effect.
Signature collection for the special election petition began Jan. 25. The petition does not ask for student support of the senate structure, but rather support to hold a special election for students to vote whether to adopt the senate structure.
Student signatures have been collected outside of residential restaurants, during classes with permission from professors, and from several student groups.
Signature collection has been focused on the Hill and in classrooms because there is more access to a greater number of students, Neesby said.
Some of the student groups that signatures have been solicited from include Bruin Republicans, Bruin Democrats and the Jewish Student Union, said Financial Supports Commissioner Ryan Smeets.
The Greek community has also been a focus for signature collection because of the large number of students involved in these organizations, Neesby said.
A majority of the Greek community endorsed the Bruins United slate during last spring’s USAC elections, the slate with which Neesby campaigned.
The senate proposal was presented and explained to the UCLA Panhellenic Council, which includes 11 sororities, and the Interfraternity Council, which includes 19 fraternities.
Petition forms were taken by sororities and signatures collected on an individual chapter basis, said Panhellenic President Rachel Iker.
“The petition was given as an option to individual chapters,” Iker said. “Panhellenic has not taken an official stance on the senate proposal.”
If enough signatures are collected, the petition must be presented to the Elections Board, which oversees all student elections and campaigns.
The board has the responsibility of verifying that each signature belongs to a registered undergraduate student of UCLA by confirming student names and student identification numbers, which students supply when signing the petition, Herzog said.
The required 15 percent of undergraduate signatures must be verified and a special election must be held within 15 days of the presentation of the petition, according to the Undergraduate Students Association Elections Code, Herzog said.
“We are trying to get extra signatures, above the required 15 percent, to avoid a potential disqualification of the petition. We want to take each signature into account,” Neesby said.
Similar special election efforts were undertaken last year, but the petition failed to collect 4,000 verifiable student signatures. Hundreds of signatures on last year’s petition could not be verified because they were illegible or students did not use their legal names.