Tuesday evening’s GUSA Assembly meeting was canceled due to lack of quorum, displaying what many students already suspect, that the ongoing saga of the unresolved Student Association executive election is beginning to disrupt the Student Association’s productive capacity.

No final decision has yet been handed down by the GUSA Constitutional Council to resolve the disputed GUSA executive election. Kelley Hampton (SFS ’05) and Luis Torres (COL ’05) claim that they were unjustly disqualified for exceeding their allotted budget, largely because of fines handed out moments before the election results were announced.

Adam Giblin (SFS ’06) and Eric Lashner (COL ’05) were declared the winners and have since begun to prepare for the transition of power. Their efforts have been limited, however, because of the ongoing appeals. After the election results were announced Hampton and Torres immediately began plans to appeal the fines to the Election Commission and the Constitutional Council. The appeal process has since extended a month and a half.

The Election Commission formally reviewed and rejected all appeals from the disqualified ticket before spring break, passing them to the Constitutional Council.

The Constitutional Council accepted amicus curiae briefs from outside parties with pertinent interest in the outcome until midnight Thursday and is expected to rule either this weekend or in the coming week.

Should Hampton and Torres be declared the winners, a counter-appeal by Giblin and Lashner will then become pertinent. The counter-appeal claims that fines against Hampton and Torres were not strict enough. In that scenario, the appeals process could be lengthened even further.

In light of the lengthy appeals process, high-level GUSA officials have discussed delaying the spring Assembly elections by two weeks. They had been slated to take place on Friday, April 2. The potential delay depends on the decision to be rendered by the Constitutional Council.

All parties involved with the appeal are prohibited from discussing specifics of the deliberations in public, however Lashner said, “This delay is certainly a disservice to the student body.” Although he and Giblin have begun interviewing candidates for the approximately 150 political appointees that occupy various GUSA positions, such as SAC chair and Lecture Fund Chair, they are unable to appoint anyone until they are sworn in. The pair has also begun to address many of their campaign promises by meeting with administration officials.

“There is not much we are allowed to tell,” Hampton said. “But what I will say is that the appeal is currently being processed under the Constitutional Council and as of [March 16], we do not know the time frame for the meeting and subsequent decision.”

The GUSA Assembly, divided between Hampton-Torres and Giblin-Lashner supporters, will vote to approve the election results once they are finalized. Since the election, the weekly Assembly meetings have been frequently canceled, several times beforehand because of lack of an agenda or conflicting representative schedules; however, there have also been several occasions when the Assembly was scheduled to meet but a sufficient quorum of representatives did not attend. Resolutions unrelated to the election have thus been stalled.

Outgoing President Brian Morgenstern (COL ’05) and Vice President Steve de Man (COL ’04) have remained in charge of GUSA, unexpectedly extending their tenures until the new executives are sworn in.