How to handle voting

one other thing sometimes happens at meetings: voting. swil's official rules say that proof of sentience and attendance at three consecutive meetings confers voting nonmembership. in practice, there are two questions that come up: 1) what happens if someone who is not eligible to votes wants to do so anyway, and 2) what about alumni? first of all, it depends what the vote is. if you're voting on whether to redefine the acceleration due to gravity to make it easier for people to move in, decide whatever you want -- it doesn't really matter.

The major thing that's been agreed upon (by all the recent administrations, at least) is that only voting nonmembers should vote in the presidential election. ``Voting nonmember'' means you:

• have actually been dismembered (to answer the question of ``Why should I bother getting dismembered?'') and
• are a current Tri-Co student.

The reason for this policy is that the leadership, and thus in some part direction, of SWIL should be a reflection of the current students' wishes. (As far as Budget Committee is concerned, we are a campus organization. But they admire our institutional memory.)

But alumni are cool and have good opinions, so we (this is Amy' now, by the way) want them to vote on other stuff. For movies, well, there's a compromise policy; see that section. For books, few enough people vote that we'd be sunk if alums didn't. For other stuff, your best bet is probably to think about whether this is a one-time (``Where should we hold Walpurgisnacht this year?'') or future policy (``Should we continue to have the Hunt?'') vote, and weight accordingly.

By: chaos golubitsky '00, jim moskowitz '88, Amy' Marinello '02 -- Last revised: 21 February 2002