This page contains information for students who have been nominated for an office in the 2009 GSG Officer Elections.

• Important Dates
• Accepting a Nomination
• Candidate Statement Formatting
• Email Address & Personal Website
• Follow-Up Statement
• Meet the Candidates Forum - Updated February 18
• Other Information

GSG Officer Elections Homepage

• February 9th, 5pm: deadline for nominees to accept nominations and submit candidate statements.
• February 13th, 5pm: deadline for candidates to submit follow-up statements.
• February 18th, 6pm: Meet-the-Candidates forum. (Friend Center 101+Atrium).
• February 25th to March 4th: Polls open.
• March 6th: Election Committee provides preliminary vote counts to the Assembly and the candidates.

Note: All times are Eastern Time.

You may accept the nomination by submitting a candidate statement to us via e-mail at gsgelect@princeton.edu. You can also accept a nomination by informing us of your acceptance without submitting a candidate statement. In case you have been nominated for more than one position, please be aware that you can accept your nomination and run in the election for only ONE position. You also may not accept nominations conditionally.

The deadline to accept your nomination and submit a candidate statement is Monday, February 9th at 5pm . You may submit any number of revised candidate statements until the deadline. Should you submit several statements for the same Office and not provide further instructions, it shall be presumed that only the last statement submitted is to be considered. Similarly, should you submit statements for multiple offices and not provide further instructions, it shall be presumed that only the last statement submitted is to be considered, and that you are implicitly declining your nomination to all other offices.

The final list of candidates will be approved by the GSG Assembly on February 11th. After this, any withdrawals submitted to us by you shall take effect if not canceled by you within 24 hours from the time you initiated contact with us to report your withdrawal (e.g., time and date that an email was sent). If that period expires after the opening of the polls or after the committee deems it infeasible to change the ballot, then the request for withdrawal shall be ignored. Once in effect, withdrawals are final and the ballot shall be changed accordingly.

The Election Committee has established the following formatting guidelines for candidate statements:

• The statement should be limited to 3000 characters in length.
• URLs in your statement will not be hyperlinked (but see below for more on URLs).
• You may use plain text and italics in your statements. You can indicate use of italics by using asterisks, for example:
  It was really, *really* important.
  will appear as:
  It was really, really important.
  Any other formatting will be ignored.
  (Just so we're clear: you can still have asterisks appear in your statement. If you use asterisks in your statement and don't provide any instructions, we will do our best do determine whether they were supposed to display as asterisks or denote italics. Regardless, you will *probably* be allowed to change this later, as if we had made an error in transcribing your statement. Got it?)

24 hours after the deadline for candidate statements, we will post your candidate statement to our website, and you will have an opportunity to look over your statement and let us know if there were any errors in transcribing. We will only correct errors that were our fault: you will not be allowed to modify your statement or correct typos. Please note that you will also be able to see other candidates' statements at this time.

You may wish to take into consideration that part of an introduction to the elections for potential voters will state "While Officers are expected to bring new ideas to the GSG, they are elected to serve the GSG Assembly, not to pursue a personal agenda.", and details will be provided on the duties of each officer.

In addition to your candidate statement you may at any time submit a preferred email address and a personal website URL. These will be listed and hyperlinked on the GSG Election Website alongside your candidate statement to allow interested voters to easily contact you or find out more information. By default we will use your Princeton email address and assume you have no website. You may submit updates about either of these at any time up to the close of polls. The website will be updated within 24 hours of your submission.

Once the final list of candidates has been approved and the initial candidate statements published, each candidate will have the option to submit a follow-up statement to allow debate on any issues raised. The deadline for submission of the follow-up statements is February 13th at 5pm. These follow-up statements should follow the same formatting guidelines as the initial candidate statements, but should be restricted to 1500 characters in length.

A "meet the candidates" forum will be held in the week prior to the elections, which will allow candidates an opportunity to talk to graduate students about their ideas and goals for the GSG. The forum is at 6pm on Wednesday 18th February in Friend Center 101+Atrium. The Election Committee plans to videotape the event and post the video online for interested students to view.

Below is the basic schedule of the event:

1. Mixer, with food. (6pm - 6:20pm)
• This mixer serves as an ice-breaker.
2. Formal statements and question & answer session. (6:20pm - about 7:20pm)
• We are aiming for the formal part of the event to be about an hour long.
• See below for details on how this part of the event works.
3. Mixer, with sweets.
• For anyone who stays around, this mixer gives attendees an opportunity to speak informally. (We'll kick everyone out by 8:20pm.)

The formal part of the event will begin with an explanation of the rules. There will then be a session for each office, in the following order: Corresponding Secretary, Press Secretary, Chair, Recording Secretary, Treasurer, Social Chair. (This order was chosen so that the contested offices come first.)

Each session will use the following structure:

1. Randomization. The moderator assigns a random order to the candidates (for that office) and calls them to the front.
2. Opening Statement. Each candidate has 60 seconds to speak.
3. Questions from Audience. Members of the audience ask questions to the candidates. Questions should be addressed to all candidates. Each candidate has 30 seconds to speak.
4. Closing Statement. Each candidate has 30 seconds to speak.

• If a candidate cannot attend the event, they may submit an opening and closing statement to be read by the moderator.
• After each speaking opportunity, the first candidate in the speaking order will be moved to the end of the speaking order. Say there were 4 candidates, numbered 1 to 4. The opening statements would be given in the order: 1, 2, 3, 4. The first question would be answered in the order: 2, 3, 4, 1. The next question would be answered in the order: 3, 4, 1, 2. If there were no more questions at that point, we would proceed to the closing statements, which would then be answered in the order: 4, 1, 2, 3.
• The audience is strongly encouraged to address questions to all candidates. For example, say you wanted to ask: "Daniel, in your statement, you wrote: 'No beer and no TV make Homer something something.' Five times. What were you thinking?" You should instead ask: "In Daniel's statement, he wrote: 'No beer and no TV make Homer something something.' Five times. What do you think about that?"
• The moderator will solicit up to six questions from the audience. (Based on the time, the Election Committee may modify this number during the event.)
• Under unusual circumstances, the Election Committee reserves the right to modify these rules.

You are welcome to engage in as much or as little campaigning as you like. Last year, many candidates posted fliers around the University and started groups on Facebook, a social networking site.

For the most part, you are welcome to write anything in your statements and you can campaign however you like. In extreme cases, such as threats of violence, the Election Committee may consult with University Counsel and take the appropriate actions.

For more details on officer elections and the duties of each position, please refer to http://www.princeton.edu/~gsgelect/. You are welcome to contact us with any questions you may have. You can also get in touch with any of the current GSG officers, who are listed at http://gsg.princeton.edu/main/Representatives.