One piece of legislation that was not passed during the Nov. 3 Associated Students Board of Directors meeting was an amendment concerning the involvement of graduate students in the voting process.

The legislation was created by vice president of finance, James Shelby II, and was meant to ask undergraduates whether or not graduates should vote only for graduate students in the future.

“I believe that graduate students, in general, are underrepresented in the elections,” Shelby said. “But that’s not because they choose not to vote, I believe that graduate students want to get more involved, but are often overlooked.”

Shelby, who said last year it took him an hour just to vote for himself, stated the upcoming process of voting online is a way to eliminate some of the voting costs, but also to make the process easier by bringing it to the students.

During the meeting, the legislation was amended to provide a special exception for the College of Education.

In the current bylaws, graduate students can vote for either general graduate representatives or representatives specific to their school, but not both.

Nicki Croly, director of education, called this as a major concern for the College of Education, which accounts for more than half the entire graduate student population at Sacramento State.

The issue concerns undergraduate child development majors that vote for graduate representatives.

There are about 300 undergraduate students currently enrolled as child development majors, which is a department in the College of Education that has about 3,000 students enrolled.

Croly’s biggest concern is that it is an unfair representation of leadership when 300 students vote for a person that will eventually represent 3,000 students.

“You are voting for who you want to represent you,” Croly said. “At the same time, you represent everyone who voted. The elected official wouldn’t be representing graduate students, but rather they’d be representing one undergraduate major.”

This issue was solved during the meeting when Luke Wood, vice president of academic affairs, moved to restate the language.

The amendment stated that graduate students can only vote for a graduate representative, except for students in the College of Education, which can still vote for either a college graduate representative or director of specific colleges.

Shelby disagreed with this amendment and ended up voting against the legislation that he initially created.

“I voted against it because I felt that the amendment undermined what the original language was trying to do,” Shelby said. “If you make an exception for one college than should be make an exception for every college?”

Despite the legislation not passing, Shelby said he plans on following up by gaining signatures among graduate students to find out whether or not graduates identify more with their college, or with the graduate program.