Just when you thought the university's election season was over (or did you even know that it occurred in the first place?), its specter apparently lives on -- at least for Justin Reese and Alistair Findeis, two students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Concerned about the Honor Committee's proposal earlier this semester to abolish random student juries for honor trials, the pair decided to run as write-in candidates for the two GSAS seats on the committee since there were no official candidates in the election, held March 1-3. And with about 20 votes each, they won. But Reese and Findeis haven't been able to assume their positions yet because the Student Council Elections Committee nullified their victories.

Why? Because the Elections Committee voted to "disallow," to borrow its bureaucratese, all elections that did not have candidates on the actual ballot, regardless of whether there were write-in campaigns such as those of Reese and Findeis. Virginia Giles, the committee's co-chair (who did not respond to queries for this article), consequently told Reese that because of this decision, affected students would now have to be appointed to the seats by their individual schools. She also said that the committee would recommend that both Reese and Findeis be appointed to the Honor Committee, nothing of the sort -- indeed nothing at all -- has happened since then.

"I think from a strictly 'legal' sense that this is a pretty cut-and-dried issue," said Reese. "A win is a win." He also found no support for the Elections Committee's ruling in Student Council's By-Laws. In fact, the section on elections actually states that the only way a victory can be overturned is by the approval of the Rules and Ethics Committee, which did not occur in this case (and that committee has so far ignored the formal petition made by Reese and Findeis to look into the matter). Giles's response was that the by-laws don't cover write-in candidates and that Robert's Rules, the standard parliamentary manual, asserts that they are not allowed if there are no officially ballotted candidates.

But Reese said that the real issue here is not such technicalities, but rather undergraduate hostility towards grad students. "In an election where undergraduates have to work hard to get elected," he said, "there is a great deal of resentment for grad students who can attain these positions with relatively little effort" due to typically low voter turnout in the graduate schools. He cited The Cavalier Daily's non-interest in the story as further proof of this sentiment. At least those undergraduates who won their elections are already busy with their new jobs. Reese and Findeis, who should be, still have to wait for the GSAS President, Amanda French (who also did not respond to queries for this article), to appoint them. When Reese first contacted her, she had no idea who he was.

In other news, the Labor Action Group is holding a demonstration in front of the Rotunda tomorrow, Friday, March 26, at 1 p.m. on behalf of its Living Wage Campaign. The goal of the year-and-a-half-long campaign, which is aligned with similar efforts nationally, is to increase the minimum wage of the university's staff to eight dollars an hour, the lowest amount the group considers to be enough to live on.

Organizers plan to present the Board of Visitors, which will be meeting then, with a petition signed by more than 900 people who support such an increase. A local labor union and labor council, which together speak for more than 1300 workers, have also signed the petition. The demonstration is the second one of the school year, continuing the visibility achieved by the Living Wage Campaign with the very high-profile rally at Fall Convocation last semester. The basis for the campaign's demands, as stated by Law School student Jody Calemine, an organizer, is simple enough. "While the university spends millions upon millions to renovate sports stadiums and bail out HMOs, many of its workers don't even make enough to feed their families," he said -- and his group wants to rectify that imbalance.

The greater Charlottesville community has already provisionally endorsed the living wage. Recently, City Council proposed raising the minimum wage of the city's full-time employees, and perhaps its part-time as well, to the magic eight an hour by the end of the next fiscal year; the budget incorporating this proposal is expected to be passed in April. Susan Fraiman, an associate professor of English and one of the organizers of the Living Wage Campaign, said she hopes the same will occur for U.Va. workers. "We think the university, as one of the largest area employers, has a moral obligation to follow the city's example and raise the salaries of those who are currently earning poverty wages." If you agree, be at the Rotunda at 1 p.m. tomorrow.