Marquette Student Government passed election reform legislation without the controversial removal of write-in candidates Thursday night.
The legislation, which was defeated 21-7 the previous week because of the Senate's questioning whether removing the write-in candidate was democratic, was passed unanimously by the Senate.
Other than the reinstitution of the write-in candidate, the reforms passed were a carbon copy of the legislation from the previous meeting.
"There are imperfections of removing the write-in option," said Dan Payette, MUSG elections coordinator and a College of Arts & Sciences senior. "We'll work on the problems after the election this year."
The election reforms now account for advancements in technology, such as e-mail, instant messaging, Web sites and other forms of electronic communication, which were not an issue when the rules were originally written.
Changing the syntax of the rules was also a main part of the reforms. Wording was changed to make the reading of the rules less complicated, according to Dek Glynn, MUSG legislative vice president and a College of Arts & Sciences senior.
"The debate on the removal of the write-in candidate demonstrated a tenderness of the subject," he said. "The Senate will account for the deficiencies of the process so it can be more representative of the student body's interest."
The Senate's passing of the legislation allowed for the official candidate packets to be handed out on time for this year's election. The distribution of the packets began on Friday.
Before the vote on the reforms, senators watched a demonstration of the new schedule of classes system by officials from the Office of the Registrar.
University Registrar Georgia McRae said that "the system was created through research we did on other schools," including all the Jesuit universities as well as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Washington.
"The schedule of classes will be Web-based because CheckMarq is very slow at high points of traffic," she said. "The schedule will be a point-and-click system, so there will not be any need for typing."
One feature of the new system will be a degree audit system. The computerized system will inform students of which classes they will need to take to graduate, McRae said.
McRae said the feature will probably be available to current freshmen and future classes because they will have the fewest graduation exceptions accumulated.
"Every exception for each student must be put in the system for the program to work," she said. "This is going to take a tremendous amount of work because it has never happened here before."
The Senate also elected a new programming vice president for the next school year. Steve Ryan, a College of Arts & Sciences junior, will replace current PVP Chris Hoff, a College of Health Sciences senior, in April.