Mirror - Vol. 09, No. 24 - February 13, 1986

              The
FairfieldMIRRORY
Volume 9, No. 24 Thursday, February 6, 1986 The Image of Fairfield
FUSA President elected
F.U.S.A. President-elect Michael Miller. [Photo by Jamie Given]
By Connie McKenna and
Joseph Draper
After a one day postponment due to the
snow Michael Miller defeated Brian Fla-herty
and Bridget Robinson by an almost
2 to 1 count. Miller tallied 504 votes to Fla-herty's
353 and Robinson's 301. The an-nouncement
was made by Steve Kudze in
the Stag Her Inn shortly after the 7:00 P. M.
closing of the polls.
Miller commented that he was overjoyed
and remained speechless for several mo-ments.
"The first order is to get out the ap-plications
for Cabinet positions. Also to get
pollsters out on campus to find out how stu-dents
want their money spent."
The President-elect went on to hint at the
format of his future Cabinet. "It will involve
some combing and shrinking. It's hard to
say now. I want to see more cohesiveness
and order both within the Cabinet and also
between the Cabinet and the Legislature."
A disappointed Brian Flaherty ac-knowledged
the Miller victory."I took my
case to the voters and talked to as many peo-ple
as possible, and they chose Mike Miller
for President. I plan to help F.U.S.A. in
any way I can, and I think it was a good
election despite the discrepancies .'
"I'm really happy that it's over," com-mented
Robinson, "I wish that a lot of things
were done differently, but now I'm going
to stay on Mike Miller's back to see that he
does his job." Discussing the discrepancies
in the election, Robinson stated, "I just want
to make sure that what happened in this
year's election doesn't happen again, and if
it takes my protesting, I'll do it."
Absentee ballots disqualified in primary election
by Stephen J. Humes
Three absentee ballots were disqualified
in last week's F.U.S.A. presidential
primary election for technical reasons, said
the student court officer serving as election
commissioner. The ballots would have
changed the results of the election.
According to Steven Kudzy, a justice on
the student court and designated election
commissioner, the original voting machine
counts were as follows: Michael Miller
520, Brian Flaherty 275, Bridget Robinson
271, Guy Irace 178. In addition, 47 votes
did not register because of incorrect voting-booth
procedures.
Following the initial counts, Kim Hale,
assistant director of university activities,
presented seven absentee-ballot votes to
Kudzy. All seven had been cast for Bridget
Robinson. However, three of those seven
votes did not include student I.D. numbers,
a requirement set forth by the election com-mission.
The commission then proceeded to dis-qualify
those three and honor the remain-ing
four ballots which did contain the
necessary student I.D. numbers. This
brought the election to a second-place tie
between Robinson and Flaherty, each with
275 votes.
According to Kudzy, the election com-mission
decided that all three candidates
would proceed to the final election. The
commission voted against a possible run-off
between Robinson and Flaherty.
The commission, a group of three stu-dents
representing the three branches of
F.U.S.A., include Patricia Potuznik of the
Executive Branch, Michele Valeriano of
Student Legislature, and Kudzy.
Others present at the closed-door count-ing
session on the night of the primary were
James English, F.U.S.A. president, Fran-cis
Reed, president of Student Legislature,
and Hale. Kudzy explained that the three
served as advisors to the election commis-sion
and assisted in the counting.
According to Hale, the absentee ballots
were distributed on Monday to seven mem-bers
of the Women's Basketball Team who
Strict parking regs proposed
could not attend the election. The absentee
ballot, a blank sheet of university memo sta-tionary,
had no instructions printed on the
ballot. However, Hale issued instructions
to each voter verbally. Hale said, "I instruct-ed
them to put the date, the name of who
they were voting for, their own name, and
their student I.D. number."
Cheryl Trumbo and Chana Wilkerson
both play on the women's basketball team.
They voted absentee at the same time.
Wilkerson said, "When we went to Kim
Hale, she was in a meeting." She added,
"She told us to put down our names, date,
the purpose for the memo, and who we were
voting for." They said that Hale told them
to fold their ballots and give them to Hale's
secretary. According to both girls, Hale
never told them to put down their student
I.D. numbers. Trumbo said, "If she would
have said 'I.D. numbers' I would have ques-tioned
it because I don't know mine off
hand." Both admitted that it was possible
Hale could have told them in the moments
she spoke to them, but they missed it.
Hale said that several of the ballots con-tained
student box numbers and a phone
number. However, the Mirror could not
confirm a relationship between the miss-ing
student I.D. numbers and the extra box
numbers and telephone numbers. Hale said,
"I told the students how to fill out the form,
and then I sealed the envelopes, without
looking at the votes." She added, The enve-lopes
weren't opened until after the. polls
closed on Tuesday night." Hale said that all
seven votes were cast for Bridget Robinson.
Kudzy said, "It's unfortunate that those
votes could not be counted. But, to me, the
fact that four people followed the instruc-tions
indicates they knew what they had to
do."
According to Hale, Kudzy changed the
absentee ballot's format for Tuesday's final
election. However, she added that no stu-dents
requested them.
Questions arose last week by some
officers of F.U.S.A. challenging the deci-sions
to allow absentee voters the day be-fore
the election. Kudzy responded to
allegations saying, "The election code re-quires
only that absentee ballots are sub-mitted
on or before the day preceding the
election. That requirement was satisfied."
by Kathryn King
In a meeting on January 30th, the Univer-sity
Council recommended that parking
regulations be enforced more strictly.
According to Jim Fitzpatrick, dean of
University Activities, the Council recom-mended
"vigorous enforcement ampus
parking regulations currently in effect." He
said, "It's a joke." Students display parking
tickets in their windows. The penalty is that
they have to pay the fines or they won't
graduate.
The Council also proposed a "a study to
evaluate the assignment of cars to particu-lar
parking lots and to see if such assign-ments
are realistic."
According to Mary McCullough, assis-tant
director of security, and Vincent Bren-nan,
director of security, there are now
1,888 parking spaces on campus. There are
a total of4,340 student registered cars. She
said that one must keep in mind that many
students have more than one registered car.
"We encourage commuters and Continuing
Education students to register all cars that
they may use."
"It's a serious problem," said Fitzpatrick.
He said that extra parking lots can't be talked
about until the existing ones are utilized to
the fullest extent.
The third proposal involves "the possi-bility
of increasing fines, 'booting', and tow-ing
for frequent violators."
"All the members of the university com-munity
are spoiled," said Fitzpatrick. "All
of us want to park as close to work or resi-dences
as we can."
Snowball this Friday
by Jeanne Burke
The annual Snowball semi-formal will be
held tomorrow, February 14, in the Cam-pus
Center Dining Room. Seven hundred
pairs of tickets are available, at a cost of
fifteen dollars a set. The band will be Hu-man
Factor, not Human League as adver-tised
last week in the Mirror. Human Factor
plays top-40s dance music. Beer and wine
will be served in the cash bar for those of
legal drinking age.
The dance is sponsored by Alpha Epsi-lon
Delta, the Biology honor society, which
also sponsors the Sadie Hawkins dance dur-ing
fall semester. These two fundraisers
help support AED activities, such as guest
lecturers, and, this year, a convention in
Ohio.
AED president Christa Lamy said that
she was disappointed when she found out
at the end of last semester that the dance
was scheduled for a long weekend, when
many people will be going away. Last year's
dance was also scheduled for the long
weekend,but was later rescheduled for a
weekend in March. This year, reschedul-ing
wasn't possible. Lamy comment-ed,"
There just aren't enough weekends in
the Spring semester."Lamy said that AED
was determined to make the best of the sit-uation,
adding that the date at least gave the
dance a good theme, Valentine's Day. Snow football players romped in the Quad Tuesday after classes were cancelled
[Photo by Stephen Humes]