After a five-hour meeting, the Associated Students Legislative Council approved the Summer Internship Selection Committee’s student appointments and tabled the remaining two bills.

The committee extensively debated the Van Wagner-Kennedy Blueprint for the Associated Students’ Election Act – a set of amendments to restructure the A.S. electoral process.

Off-Campus Rep Sinead Kennedy said the proposals were drawn in order to make the elections run smoother. One of Kennedy’s proposals was to shorten the length of the campaigning period, modifying it from two weeks to one week.

“Elections are so stressful,” Kennedy said. “I know that I ended up not sleeping, dropping classes. I even know people who withdrew for the whole quarter. So we tried to make things easier. Instead of the two weeks of campaigning being beneficial, people became sick of us. They wanted no more to do with us. Decreasing the campaigning period would also be better on the mental health of the candidates.”

Other council members, such as Off-Campus-Rep Josue Aparicio, said the one-week campaign period was too brief and left no time to reach out to the entire student body.

“I don’t think one week is enough,” second-year Aparicio said. “There’s so much to do during the campaign. There’s not even enough time during two weeks to hit the residence halls or students’ organizations so one week will actually be worse on one’s mental health.”

Another one of the bill’s modifications to the electoral process does not allow the ballot to be altered even if a candidate is disqualified. However, Off-Campus Rep Topher Kindell said he felt leaving the names of the disqualified students would only complicate the process by taking votes away from the candidates who still have a chance to win.

“I feel like what it boils down to is a case of wasting votes,” fourth-year Kindell said. “If disqualified names are still [on the ballot], people will vote for them. … People would be wasting votes on those that have no chance of winning. There’s no point in putting [a person’s names] on a ballot if there’s no way for them to win.”

The Van Wagner-Kennedy Blueprint for the Associated Students’ Election Act was tabled until next week’s meeting.

The committee also introduced a bill to change the job description of the on-campus representatives. On-Campus Rep Ashley Day said students from the Residence Hall Association need more representation in A.S.

“I sat down and calculated how much presence we had on RHA’s board, and we have 16 percent of the vote,” Day said. “That’s a lot of votes from a board that’s not our own. On-campus residents should therefore have more representations on A.S. So, On-Campus Reps should go to more [A.S. Boards’ committees and commissions] meetings and only four RHA coordinating board meetings. This way, residents will be better represented in the university as whole instead of just the residence halls.”

This bill was also tabled for next week.

Lastly, the committee set a 10-minute intermission after the executive officer reports and prior to the group projects reports. On-Campus-Rep Becca Huebsch said that the council needed to designate a specific time to leave and get food as to eliminate disruptions caused by members coming and going throughout the meetings.

“We should have a set time when we all leave to get food,” second-year Huebsch said. “We need to prevent people from walking out during executive reports and public forum.”