Ben Vitale and Emma Gavazzi
Photo courtesy of Emma Gavazzi
BY EMMA GAVAZZI AND BEN VITALE
[Editor’s note: Incumbents Emma Gavazzi and Ben Vitale are being challenged by Jack Shea and Kaylee Grace for 2025-26 SGA executive president and SGA executive vice president.]
Just as the United States government has judicial, legislative and executive branches, so does the Student Government Association at St. Bonaventure University. That means that when questions regarding elections arise, the judicial branch decides the answers to those questions, independent of the legislative and executive branches.
Recently, the judiciary decided that clubs are not permitted to endorse candidates in SGA elections. Part of its reasoning claims that students supporting different candidates from other club members might lead to feelings of alienation, citing the Clubs and Organizational Handbook. However, support for an SGA candidate need not correlate to a person’s political or social affiliations and is, therefore, not discriminatory.
The next portion of the judiciary’s reasoning in its decision was that the club handbook states that there should be “no political advertising or candidate promoting.” “Political,” here, is an attributive adjective that applies to both “advertising” and “candidate promoting.” Clubs not being permitted to promote political candidates, then, would have no impact on clubs promoting SGA candidates, since SGA is a student government, meaning that it is inherently and decidedly not political.
The next decision that the judiciary made was that members of the Election Committee are not permitted to publicly support or endorse SGA candidates. While it is crucial to avoid biases in the election process, we trust the integrity of our election officers, and so does the judiciary. It is difficult, however, to remove Election Committee members from their position as students, friends, coworkers, etc., in our community simply as a result of their sitting on this committee.
Further, we want to make the fact abundantly clear that we value free speech and view students’ right and ability to voice their thoughts — within the bounds of respecting all members of our community, themselves and our Franciscan values — on this campus without fear of sanction by the judiciary as essential.
Ultimately, we can disagree with the judiciary while still respecting their authority to make these kinds of decisions with the intention of best serving students at their core; it is their responsibility, and it is within their power. We appreciate the time and effort that the judiciary puts into its roles and into making its decisions. We maintain the critical nature of collegiality, respecting differences of opinion and working together.
We will not betray our membership in the student government as a whole by publicly denouncing one of its branches because, although we may disagree with the judiciary on some of their decisions, we hold firm that Bonnies come first.
