Miss Homecoming and Miss Auburn elections will look somewhat different in their outreach and campaigning this year with reduced student numbers on campus and the need to physically distance. During Auburn’s Student Government Association Senate on Monday, Sept. 28, new guidelines were shared for the upcoming elections.
Katherine Facteau, senior in communication disorders and assistant vice president of programs for SGA, spoke briefly about changes to the campaign packet to adhere to the University’s COVID guidelines. The campaigns for both will be mostly virtual, and if campaigns choose to promote their candidates on the concourse, there can be no more than three students at a table.
Additionally, there will be no handouts around campus to limit exposure and restrictions on voting days. There will also be a limit on T-shirt amounts instead of the usual 400.
“That amount just puts a liability on us to have that many people associated with SGA at once,” Facteau said.
They are also looking to lower the budget because the typical amount won’t be necessary for a mostly virtual campaign.
“In addition, we are looking to do probably no billboards,” Facteau said. “This requires more students to get together, and we can’t control or monitor those situations.”
Instead, SGA will fund concourse banners for candidates by the Haley Concourse featuring their logo and information about voting day.
Following that, the mass media policy will be reviewed in order to offer more leniency, allowing candidates to use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to promote their campaigns, which were not allowed previously.
“We wanna give candidates as much we can for pretty much running a social media campaign,” Facteau said.
Since SGA won’t be using the election budget for things they typically do, they’re looking to use the money to promote each candidate a lot more this year.
“Just because of all of the setbacks this year, we want to give candidates as much as we can from our side ... using our money and our resources to help candidates out as much as possible,” Facteau said.
Molly Sullivan, senior in health administration and at-large senator, proposed a bill to temporarily suspend the Title X Code of Laws, all of the election laws, for the 2020 Miss Homecoming Election. The process will be governed entirely by the Miss Homecoming Campaign Packet, which would be developed by the Executive Director of Elections. All relevant portions of Title X would remain, but everything else would be adjusted as outlined by Facteau.
The bill passed quietly on the floor with no debate, and the nominations for both Miss Homecoming and Miss Auburn will open on Thursday, Sept. 31.
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