Elections at CSUN Generate Little Interest

Eyeing a selection of $6 sunglasses in the campus quad, his BMX bike at his side, Cal State Northridge graphic design student Jered Sodt explained why he wouldn’t be voting in this week’s student elections.

“I just don’t care,” the 20-year-old said with conviction. Besides, he added, “I voted last time, and the guy lost.”

If campaign workers around the city were lamenting yet another local election with low voter turnout Tuesday and searching for answers, they might look to the CSUN campus. There, students cited hectic schedules and general political disenchantment as reasons for speeding past the polls.

Although the balloting at CSUN continues today and no final tally will be made until later in the week, candidates were toiling in the sun in the hope that more students would cast votes during this election than the last. Out of 26,000 students, a mere 782 made it to the polls last fall.

And that was more than had voted during some campus elections of the last several years, when the total number of ballots cast hovered around 500.

“If we get 3% [of the student body] we’re doing good,” said Reekitta Grimes, public relations coordinator for CSUN’s student government body, Associated Students Inc. “We understand that people come to class and then leave, but we want to encourage them to take a minute to [decide] where their money goes.”

At commuter campuses across the state and around the country, getting students to vote is a vexing problem, said Jennifer Myronuk of the California State Student Assn., the umbrella organization for Cal State student governments.

Many live far from campus, hold full-time jobs, have families. They don’t always have the time, or inclination, to read up on collegiate esoterica such as Referendum No. 2 on the CSUN ballot, which asks if the university should alter the way it grants tenure to professors.

Students are also being asked to pick their president, vice president and a host of other student leaders for the 1997-98 academic year.

To counter the information dissemination problem, the student association designed a two-color, easy-to-read voter’s guide. They whipped up a prepunched page--ready for placement in a three-ring binder--detailing the three advisory votes, including the tenure issue. They distributed bookmarks labeled with a list of the polling sites.

The university has even employed a vote-by-phone system for nearly three years, an innovation used by only a handful of universities around the country that allows students to vote from any touch-tone phone.

Of course, the phones at two polling sites were down for part of the day Tuesday. And the system isn’t speedy.

“It takes 10 minutes, which is pretty much too long,” said 21-year-old Sean Weske, who was nonetheless thrilled with the $7.50-an-hour he was earning by manning a poll in the Oviatt Library.

Not that he had to work awfully hard for his money, so few were the voters.

“This school is very apathetic,” said Janie “J.J.” Jones, a candidate for vice president, as she handed out fliers touting her ticket’s goals and experience. “I want them to vote, even if it’s not for me.”

Some did, even if casting that electronic ballot had the feel of paying penance.

“I was one of the 97% who did not vote last year,” said political science major Daemeth Rooney. “It’s my senior year. I decided to make up for it.”