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THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2017 | VOLUME 133 ISSUE 28

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904

Election results certified by Elections Commission DARBY VANHOUTAN @darbyvanhoutan

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n the final act of a particularly long and contentious Student Senate election, the Elections Commission certified both senate and Union referendum results on Tuesday evening. The official results remained consistent with the unofficial ones released on April 14 after the polls closed at 4 p.m. that same day. OneKU candidates Mady Womack and Mattie Carter were elected as student body president and student body vice president, respectively, with 47.1 percent of the vote. Womack said, with results now certified, she and the rest of those elected feel they can finally get to work. “We are going to spend the rest of the week interviewing applications for the executive staff,” Womack said. “We will accomplish a lot of what we set out to do this summer alone, so students will have some changes to come back to.” KUnited presidential candidate Tomas Green and vice presidential candidate Zoya Khan took second with 34.93 percent of the

Ashley Hocking/KANSAN Mady Womack and Mattie Carter of the OneKU coalition were elected student body president and student body vice president on April 14. Their win was certified Tuesday night.

vote. TrueKU came in third with 12.41 percent of the vote and Onward received the least with 5.63 percent. In the almost two weeks since polls closed on April 14, the Elections Commission heard five violation complaints along with an appeal of the results and an additional hearing with the Court of Appeals.

According to Student Senate Rules and Regulations (SSRR) the commission must allow a certain amount of time to pass before results are certified. Due to the Court of Appeals hearing, which took place April 22 and ended in the appeal’s dismissal, results couldn’t be certified until 72 hours after the court’s

decision was released. Of the 23,172 students at the University, 5,561 students voted for Student Senate seats, making voter turnout 24 percent — a 4.75 percentage increase from last year’s election. Of the 65 total senators elected, 32 ran with OneKU, 22 ran with KUnited, four ran with Onward and seven

were independent candidates. The voter turnout for the Union referendum was a bit higher at 24.8 percent, with 5,747 voting out of the 23,172 total students at the University. A majority of these students, 56.68 percent, answered no to the referendum. A total of 32.6 percent

answered yes and 10.71 percent of students abstained. Student Senate campaign season officially began when coalition registration began on Feb. 2 and remained in full swing through the elections, which were postponed one day due to technical difficulties, on April 13 and 14. The 67 individuals who came out victorious in the elections will began their year-long term at a joint senate meeting with current senators on Wednesday. Historically, at joint senate executive staff such as chief of staff and communications director are appointed after applications are submitted and interviews are conducted with newly-elected executives. However, Womack said, this wouldn’t have been possible due to delayed results. “The long delay in the certification of results just means that we have not been able to even post job descriptions to hire our executive staff,” Womack said Tuesday night. “Not being able to confirm a staff tomorrow night at Joint Senate just delays our progress on our platforms.”

New grad student policy gives new parents time off PEYTON KRAUS @peytonkraus12

Graduate students now have more options if they become parents while attending the University. A new policy officially entered into the online policy library a few weeks ago, which states that graduate students welcoming a child into their home will be allowed a six-week academic accommodation. This allows students to take a break from their academic responsibilities in order to aid in their transition to having a new member of their family. “We had heard from a few different faculty that they really wanted to be able to support their students, and they weren’t really sure how they should do that,” said Amber Roberts Graham, graduate studies policy coordinator for the University. "So we thought we should provide some guidelines that really encourage them to work directly with their students."

Each student will be advised to work with their professors and advisors to come up with an alternative plan for their course load, which includes writing extra reflections in place of attending class or receiving extensions on projects and papers. “It’s really just an extension of the existing expectations,” Graham said. "Your deadlines would suit what you can accomplish on a certain timeframe. It’s a little bit of a different kind of environment." Graham mentioned that her office sees this policy working well for graduate students because of the layout of curriculum and classes. “Graduate school is so individualized that any given student could need something different, and we wanted to build that into the policy, that flexibility,” Graham said. The Dean of Graduate Studies, Michael Roberts, who got the idea from an initiative put in place by the University’s medical

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center, initiated this policy. “He really wanted to make KU more overtly friendly to a wide variety of students, and we find lots of graduate students have kids coming into graduate school or have kids while they’re in graduate school, and we wanted to be a little bit more explicit that that’s OK and that we’re going to work with them,” Graham said. As a non-traditional student with three sons, student senator Frank McGuinness understands how important it is to have to ability to continue through school, even while juggling raising a family. “I’m always grateful when the University acknowledges parents who are trying to further their education,” McGuinness said. "The reality is, getting an education certainly leads to better opportunities long term to support yourself and your family." McGuinness agrees that accommodations should SEE POLICY PAGE 3

Photo illustration by Miranda Clark-Ulrich

Athletic facilities to be only KU buildings without concealed carry NOLAN BREY @NolanBrey

As the University prepares for the upcoming implementation of concealed carry on campus, only some of its buildings — athletics facilities — will be able to keep guns out due to practicality and budget constraints. Starting this fall, the University will implement armed guards and metal detectors at entrances to Allen

KANSAN.COM GALLERY The Lawrence Humane Society hosted an Easter egg hunt for dogs. See the gallery at Kansan.com.

Fieldhouse, Memorial Stadium and Rock Chalk Park during events with more than 5,000 spectators. Additionally, spectators will no longer be allowed to bring bags or purses into athletic venues and instead must use clear plastic bags. These new policies are a reaction to the concealed carry law that will allow guns in campus buildings starting July 1. However, the law states that guns can be restricted from build-

ings if the buildings have adequate security measures (ASMs), such as armed guards and metal detectors. In theory, every building on campus could restrict guns if ASMs were put in place. In 2015, the University investigated securing the more than 200 buildings on campus, but the investigation revealed that doing so would cost upwards of $20 million and congest the flow of student foot traffic. SEE ASM PAGE 2

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