The contest over which options will appear on the final ballot for voting on the new nickname is not over yet. On Sunday, the Student Senate met and approved a resolution in support of placing the option of UND/North Dakota back on the ballot.

Honors Program Senator Chase Johnson wrote the resolution which cites in its conclusions rudimentary polls conducted by Student Government and the Grand Forks Herald that showed support for the option (68.27 percent in the Student Government poll and 71 percent in the Herald poll.)

“Our main goal is to represent the students,” Johnson said while addressing his resolution. “While we all like to think that we are the smartest ones in the room, and that we have the best ideas, our main goal is to represent what our constituents say.”

The resolution also claims that placing North Dakota back on the list of answers would be in the best interests of students, in regards to the nickname voting process, and clarifies that adding UND/North Dakota would not remove any of the current options that were chosen by the nickname committee.

Johnson states that the goal of the resolution is to get the UND/North Dakota option back on the ballot. “First if President Kelley would be open to reconsideration of that nickname, it does not sound like he currently is, but if he’d be willing to do so, I’d be perfectly fine with that option,” Johnson said. “Then the secondary option is the State Board of Higher Education will be meeting over the next  couple of weeks and months, and if it happens before the nickname vote, the state board can ultimately look into that decision and see if they would be willing to place North Dakota back on the list of options.”

Johnson notes that it was important for the Student Government to intervene in the process in order to represent student beliefs. Johnson said that it is important to both make the administration aware of what the students want, and also to make sure that the administration consider acting upon that. “We want to make sure the administration knows, but also what do we want the administration to know about,” Johnson said.

Johnson was also concerned about the student participation in the nickname committees results. “I’ve had discussions with a lot of the students that were on the committee, especially the one that was the main student representing the nickname committee,” Johnson said. “And she actually voted against taking North Dakota off the list of options. So I think even among the students, whether it’s student athletes or just regular students, their votes have backed up what our resolutions proposing.”

Johnson also claimed that it was other factions of the nickname committee that decided to avoid the UND/North Dakota option, and that students have been consistent in their support for the North Dakota option.

One problem that has been pointed out in the Student Government pole. The timing of the pole, in the summer while most students were away from campus. There was also complaints about the turnout for the poll, which despite being the highest the Student Government has ever gotten was less than one fifth of the student population.

“I don’t think that it is disingenuous (to say that the poll didn’t reflect the whole of the student body) simply because we gave every student the opportunity to respond at that time,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be impossible to get a lot of people to respond to the poll, because there’s always distance students that are counted in the UND student population that may have no physical connection to the university, so they may not feel passionate about this issue.”

Johnson said that if the UND/North Dakota option was on the ballot, and was selected in the vote, that it could be the permanent nickname solution for UND.

Alex Bertsch is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected]