Some former members of the now-defunct Coalition of Students for All Students said the coalition was created to ensure that members were elected to the Student Association senate.

The coalition was successful in that regard; of 30 coalition members, 29 won senate seats in the Sept. 21 elections. At election time, the group ran advertisements which listed coalition members and voting information. Most coalition members are active in NIU’s greek community.

Senate Speaker Joe Annunzio said membership in the coalition was “opened up to fraternity and sorority people first.” He added that the coalition “never really sat down and discussed issues.

“If 10 vacancies open up in the senate next semester, I can almost guarantee there will be another coalition,” he said. “If there had not been a coalition this semester, I don’t think we would have filled all the seats on the senate. There’s a lot of apathy on campus.”

Sen. Tom Link, who was not a coalition member and was not informed about the coalition prior to the senate elections, said, “The only reason (coalition members) ran together was to help each other get elected. They didn’t have an agenda.”

Annunzio said that if a person suggests that the coalition was formed to get greek students elected to the senate, “I would call that person a liar to their face.

“There’s no way anyone on the senate would use their power for any personal gains,” he said.

Link and Sen. Jim Ruzicka said former coalition members on the senate no longer act as a coalition. “A lot of people on the senate are independent and are thinking for themselves,” Ruzicka said.

“The purpose of the coalition was to get students whose political ideologies were of the mainstream,” he said.

But Sen. Michelle Gerritson said she sees “a lot of people on the senate voting in blocks. The same people vote the same way on a lot of the issues. The results (of those issues) usually end up the way the leaders on the senate vote.”