In a perfect world, there would be no rules. 

Everyone would be on the same page, everyone would be happy; it would be this beautiful utopia where rabbits and deer nibble blades of grass and lettuce out of your hands. 

This isn’t a perfect world and because it isn’t rules need to be followed. 

At the Student Senate meeting on Wednesday, senators voted to see who would be the next speaker of the senate. 

There was only one candidate and several senators spoke up and addressed their concerns regarding her leadership, or lack thereof. 

In the end, the candidate lost by 14-2 with two abstentions.

There was nothing wrong with the opinions shared by the student senators, and if that is what our student senators saw fit, then that’s fine. 

The problem was the voting process, because instead of following their bylaws and taking a roll call vote, senators voted on a piece of paper and those paper votes were counted outside of the meeting room.

Furthermore, there wasn’t a motion to suspend the bylaws at the meeting and when the tallies were counted, it was just announced that the candidate lost. That’s it. No number, no information, just she lost, let’s move on.

The point of having those bylaws, following them and having roll call voting is to be transparent and to own up to your vote. 

Don’t hide behind a piece of paper because you’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. That’s life and it isn’t fair to the candidate if they don’t know why they didn’t win and it’s not fair to your constituents if they don’t know what’s going on. 

It was stated in Wednesday’s article about the Student Senate meeting in The Daily Eastern News that the reason senators did not vote was because they “wanted to save feelings” and did not want to be influenced by other votes. 

It’s a nice thought to want to spare the feelings of the candidate because none of us want to hurt someone’s feelings and we get that it’s easy to be influenced by others.

But, this isn’t a perfect world and if the Student Senate doesn’t rip off the band-aid now and do this then it will have a rude awakening. 

The Student Senate is a public body that is supposed to represent the students and therefore it is expected that they follow their rules and aren’t afraid of putting their names behind their vote, especially if it is what they believe is right.