Student voting had a shaky start Monday morning.

Forty-one students cast their online ballots before a problem with the referendum regarding club sports funding was fixed.

The ballot question asked whether club sports should directly receive 5 percent of student activity fees. They currently receive about that same amount of money through the Student Activities Funding Board. In turn, the SAFB would receive 5 percent less of the fees. This was proposed originally by the SAFB and club sports.

What should have been a yes or no question, the referendum presented some of these first voters with three options from a 2008 student election about what the university should do with excess funds. If the referendum question wasn’t confusing enough, the completely unrelated options presented to some of the voters made it worse.

If this were any other game, everybody at the table would be screaming misdeal.

Even if the final count is one way or the other regardless of these 41 votes, there needs to be a re-vote.

Perhaps the reason why Oakland University Student Congress and the representatives from club sports don’t seem worried about this is because they assume they wouldn’t make a difference.

One OUSC member admits that he doesn’t think it would matter because students will vote yes for anything. In 2005 and 2006, similar yes/no questions regarding percent changes in funding for the direct-funded organizations were passed.

Every year, a committee of leaders from direct funded student organizations, including The Oakland Post, look at the appropriations of funding. This year, the committee took their own vote on whether or not the club sports issue should be presented for students to decide.

The Oakland Post, WXOU and Student Video Productions all voted against putting it on the ballot. While we can’t and don’t speak for other organizations or individuals, it makes sense that people might think the margin won’t be significant enough to have a re-vote.

Voters probably assume that something is on the ballot because it’s a good idea. It’s not as if there was a petition going around to get it on the ballot.

It’s not as if there was any more publicity for this change other than what The Post printed in a news story (that admittedly, not everybody reads).

One of the reasons The Post did not want this issue to be voted on by students at this point in time was because of the fact that there is very little knowledge of what club sports does or has available.

We believe the club sports representatives when they say the club sports council is working to remedy this lack of awareness, but shouldn’t that have been done before the students even voted?

Candidates for president and vice president were out in full force telling students what they stood for.

We expect the same from any group that is looking for us to pass anything in their favor.