By JORDAN GREEN, Editor-in-Chief
Imagine living in a country where voters don’t know the complete results of an election.
They’re told who won an elected office, but they’re not told how many votes were cast for the winning and losing candidates.
Does that sound like a legitimate form of governance to you?
Consider then the fact that we almost had that situation this week at Northwestern.
On Wednesday morning, the winners of Northwestern’s Student Government Association elections were announced. Yosbelli Lora won the vice president’s race. Erika Hernandez won the treasurer’s race. And Angel Marshall won the secretary’s race.
That’s what we were told. But Northwestern SGA officials initially did not say the number of votes each candidate received – and they only changed course after they were advised that they have to provide such information.
On Wednesday morning, Olivia Yandel, the SGA adviser, said she did not want to announce specific vote tallies to avoid embarrassment for losing candidates. She only provided the total number of people who voted, which was 305.
Afterward, I spoke with Calleb Mosburg, Northwestern’s dean of student affairs and the SGA co-adviser.
Mosburg said the election results had been released. However, only the names of winning students had been. Voting tallies hadn’t been released.
He later said the university would release all the information “if we need to release that.”
“There’s been times in the past when we just release who won the election,” he said. “If there was questions that came up to where they wanted to know how many votes they had, we did that. We want to provide that information. … It’s not hiding that information.”
Do you agree? Is that hiding information?
At a time when millions of Americans distrust our nation’s election system, it’s wrong to even consider not readily releasing complete election information. The distrust of our election system caused a lot of problems in the last election, even to the point what we had an assault on the U.S. Capitol.
That isn’t the same problem here, luckily. But our electoral system must be completely transparent on all levels.
Here’s our university’s mission statement: “Northwestern Oklahoma State University provides quality educational and cultural opportunities to learners with diverse needs by cultivating ethical leadership and service, critical thinking and fiscal responsibility.”
I think we can all agree from reading this statement that it’s the job of higher learning institutions to help mold people into functioning, informed and responsible members of society. That comes in part by teaching students how to exercise their American rights – not from willingly releasing only partial information about the democratic processes by which they are governed.
After I spoke with Mosburg, Yandel said I could send her an email requesting the vote tallies. She sent them promptly.
But think about this for a moment. We had to request information that should have been made available without question. That’s like asking for the right to free speech. We already have it. We don’t have to ask to use it.
By releasing the full election results, our Northwestern leaders are proving that we can trust them. And that’s something they must do. We must always verify what we are told, and that’s what these numbers do.
In America, we have laws requiring public bodies – universities included – to release information to the public. These are called open records laws, and they have stood the test of time. Check out this 1979 opinion from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, which stated that the Student Government Association and residence hall associations at Oklahoma State University are subject to these laws.
“These two bodies have the authority to make decisions concerning the student population of the University from which no student may be exempted and also make decisions concerning the dispersement [sic] of funds collected,” the Attorney General’s Office said. “As such, the Student Government Association and the Residence Halls Association are subject to all the requirements of 25 O.S. 301 et seq. (1977), and are compelled to follow the provisions of the act in the manner in which they were enacted.”
There may be some minor differences between Northwestern’s SGA and OSU’s. I’m honestly not sure. But the fact remains that Northwestern’s SGA is a part of our publicly-funded university, which is required to follow open records laws. As it should be.
Would anyone believe we have duly elected public officials without knowing how many people actually voted for them?
IN DEFENSE OF SGA
Now, in defense of our SGA officials.
In the past, few people have pushed for greater access to public records here at Northwestern – and that includes the Northwestern News. One of our former editors-in-chief was both the paper’s top editor and the president of the SGA at the same time. Obviously, he didn’t ask for more information on election returns. As a result, because he and other editors haven’t asked in the past, some of our leaders haven’t given much information out.
I can’t speak for my predecessors, though. The rights guaranteed by the First Amendment and all related laws should be not only enforced, but also exercised vigorously. The Northwestern News staff intends to do just that.
And even though officials may not have been asked to give out this kind of information before, they need to now.
Another point. I understand that some information is embarrassing, including election results. And I “get” that losing an election is tough.
Actually, nobody understands it better than I do. My mother ran for mayor in Blackwell and lost by a huge margin on Tuesday. It’s tough. But I work for the newspaper there, and the news of her loss will be on the front page of the newspaper, too.
Candidates run knowing they could lose, and they have to consent to that. We shouldn’t lose sight of this.
Even if the truth is unpleasant, it must still be published. No election official in the country would simply announce a winner without releasing the number of people who voted for the candidates.
It is my sincere hope that our university will learn from this situation and make positive, transparent changes going forward. I have no personal qualms with anyone involved in this situation. As a matter of fact, I have respect for their positions.
But this situation has been a shortcoming regarding Northwestern’s transparency as a public institution – and we can do better.