While the Clinton-Obama race remains hotly contested, the Castleton Student Association election went by without any competition. Only 20 students were elected to fill the 40 positions available, leaving many positions open – including the presidency.

“I think no one ran for SA President because of two reasons: first, because it is an enormous time commitment and a lot of stress,” lame duck Vice President Lucas Roberts said. “Second, many students involved this previous term didn’t want to deal with some of the deans in the student life office.”

Edward MacEnulty ran for vice-president when he noticed that nobody was running for positions in the top branch.

“I ran so someone could run the senate meetings,” MacEnulty said. “Without the senate it’s really hard for anything else to operate.”

Although fewer positions were filled, a higher percentage of students voted than last year (7.86% compared to 6.99% in 2007).

“I was disappointed in the number of people running and the number of people who voted,” said Victoria Angis, advisor to the SA. “I was not disappointed in the caliber of the people who decided to run.”

Roberts was also disappointed in the student’s apathy toward elections.

“The SA is a great organization if it has student involvement. Without this it fails,” Roberts said.

Two people received more than five write-in votes, which would make them eligible for the president if they were interested. The April 10 deadline passed without either of them stepping up to take the position.

If no president is elected, MacEnulty said he will offer to become president.

Angis said that the SA will discuss what to do in a meeting on Wednesday. Their choices are to revamp the SA hierarchy or elect one of the write-in candidates who received only one or two votes.

“I want to put massive effort to recruit to get to full speed, or we could look at the way SA is organized and change it if it is not working,” Angis said.

Roberts explained one proposed way to change the SA.

“There has been some discussion of abolishing the SA as it is currently and creating a new governance structure similar to what a small town uses with a board analogous to a town select board,” Roberts said. “I am not sure whether this will actually be put into place, time will tell.