The candidates’ registration for the 12th election of Student Senate ended last Thursday (Dec. 12th, 2003). Although there are only 13 candidates, not even half of the 42 council members, the election will take place anyway. Time for voting is on Dec. 16th and 17th, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

According to rules for the autonomy of student organizations, the minimum number of student senators is 30 persons; if the representatives are not enough, a make-up election will be held. Since there are 18 senators left in the Student Senate, even if all these 13 candidates are elected, it just crosses the threshold of 30 members. That is to say, if two candidates fail to pass the election, the Senate will lose its legitimacy. However, Guo Yi-chen, the Chief Executive of the Election Committee, indicates that there will be no make-up election this semester no matter whether the senator numbers exceed 30 or not. He said that it is too hasty to hold a make-up election this semester, so if the senator members are not enough, the make-up election will be hold next semester.

Although a political opinions presentation originally scheduled to promote campaign publicity at Poster Street was cancelled this year due to the time constraints, the candidates are still full of passion and idealism. For instance, Lee Ke-han (Senior, Dept. of Public Administration) is a physically and mentally handicapped student. In order to push the school authorities to pay more attention to physically and mentally handicapped students and to solve various difficulties encountered during their process of learning at school, he decided to join the election. Wang Shih-hao, an M.A. student of the Graduate Institute of China Studies, was a student senator too when he studied as an undergraduate. He graduated from Dept. of Law, Soochow University, and has profound knowledge of law.

Students are urged to cast their ballots at the assigned places using their student IDs. The following are the voting places: students of the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Education vote at the entrance of the second floor, Building of Liberal Arts; students of the College of Engineering at the entrance of the third floor, Main Engineering Building; students of the College of Sciences at the entrance of Liu-shien Memorial Science Hall; students of the College of Business and College of Management at the entrance of the third floor, Business Management Building; students of the College of Foreign Languages and Literature at the entrance of the second floor, Ching-sheng Memorial Building; students of the College of International Studies at the entrance of the second floor, Chueh-sheng Memorial Library.