Ohio University Student Senate will announce the results of its concealed carry referendum at its Wednesday meeting.
The result will be determined by the majority vote out of 100 total votes. Fifty votes will be proportional to the student body votes, and 50 votes will be from the senate’s 50 voting members.
“I think whichever majority students vote, senate will vote that way unless they have evidence of their specific constituents opposing the general student body vote,” Senate Treasurer Steve Lichtenfels said. “I’d expect senate members to vote, for the most part, the way students did.”
Student Senate President Hannah Clouser and Vice President Courteney Muhl said they will not know which way students are voting until the referendum closes Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. Senate has been using social media to get an idea of how the student body is voting.
“Without exact numbers, a way to keep tabs on the vote throughout the day is through social media analytics,” Muhl said. “We are doing our best to reach out on social media, and we’re excited to see the numbers.”
Clouser said students on both sides of the spectrum have been posting on social media and emailing senate about their opinion.
“With what we’ve seen it definitely will not be an overwhelming majority one way or another,” Clouser said. “I think it’ll be pretty close. But we’ll see.”
By Monday night, 5,398 students had voted in the referendum, which was more than the total number of students who voted in last year’s senate election, University Life Commissioner Jacob Haskins said.
Director of Veterans Affairs Jordan Simon said the number of students who voted in the referendum “exceeded expectations.”
Clouser will give the State of the Senate Address, which senate’s Rules and Procedures requires to occur in week 3 of Spring Semester. Clouser said she will present an overview of what the senate has accomplished in the last semester.
“Hannah will hit on bigger things we’ve accomplished, like the Bobcat Pledge, where we’re at with SAC funding and the student worker hour increase,” Lichtenfels said.
In addition to voting for either side of the referendum, senate will vote on five resolutions.
One of the resolutions are to appoint a Women’s Affairs senator and one is to appoint a Graduate College senator. Lichtenfels said he expects both of them to pass.
The other resolutions are to implement a new appointment process, to assign the duties of the Parliamentarian to the Clerk of Court and to allow vice commissioners to assume commissioner status if a commissioner leaves. Clouser said she expects those to pass as well.
