When students vote next week in the SGA elections, no name will appear on the ballot for the vice president of financial affairs.
Edward Patton, who currently serves as treasurer for SGA, represented the post at Sunday night’s executive candidate debate. Though Patton is not an official candidate, to successfully win office, he must win with a write-in campaign.
Kathleen Cramer, senior associate vice president of student affairs, said Patton might meet obstacles in his write-in campaign.
“I think he’ll have to have the voters informed about his platform,” she said, adding that he’ll also have to get out the vote.
Cramer said it was her understanding that Patton did not meet the deadline to apply as a candidate.
According to SGA officials, due to a computer and timing error, Patton’s application never reached the advisers.
“I sent the application from my computer in the SGA office, through Outlook, last Thursday afternoon,” Patton said. “The ‘write a message’ option only came up, and I was in a rush to get to my finance class. It didn’t go through until after I’d come back from my class.”
Regardless of what happened to his application, Patton said it would not derail his campaign. Patton said that no one discouraged him from running without having completed the application.
As of now, he is the only candidate running at all for the vice president of financial affairs position.
There will be a challenge being a write-in candidate.
“When you think of write in candidates, you think more of Julio Jones, Mark Ingram, and Nick Saban — not real candidates,” Patton said.
If elected, he said he wants to put financial deals online.
“We’ll give the budget to the executive secretary, and we’ll switch the Financial Affairs Committee allotments from paper to online,” Patton said.
Patton said he considers the online adaptation and its successful implementation, among his key issues, as the “biggest one.”
“Improving financial transparency of all the offices, from external to academic to the office of the president and holding them liable. That’s what putting the budget online will do,” he said.
The vice president for financial affairs deals directly with the financial matters of the University. Proposing and implementing policies regarding tuition, student loans, scholarships, work-study programs, improvements to buildings and roads, and the allocation of SGA funds all fit in this category. In addition, the officer serves as chairperson of the Senate Financial Affairs Committee and nominates the treasurer.
As far as the vice president for financial affairs’ job next year, Patton said he doesn’t see “any glaring challenges. It’s more a day-to-day job, with awarding the funding to different organizations.”
That leaves the challenges, then, in his write-in campaign.
“Fortunately, I was able to go to the [first SGA] debate, and obviously, I need to get enough votes,” he said.
