The Students’ Association Senate’s new Web-based voting system ran relatively smoothly this past week in the fall senate election. This comes after a controversial election last spring.
“It [was] a chance for Senate to prove itself again ? that Senate can run elections without having any controversy,” senior and chair of the senate’s election committee Steve Duszlak said.
Election turnout increased to 14.5 percent, an increase of over five percent from last fall. A total of 586 students voted to elect eleven area senators, three of whom regained their seat from last year.
The highest vote getter for the entire election was freshman Stephanie Yurchyk with 73 votes. She earned a seat as a Residential Quad senator.Close behind was sophomore Thomas Hayes, also from the Residential Quad, with 72 votes.
“It feels good ? it’s nice to know that students have chosen me to represent them,” Hayes said. Already active on campus as a performer in the theater, a member of the ski team and the soccer club, Hayes hopes to represent students by working on current meal plans, which he feels treat students unfairly.
Duszlak said that he believes there was a more enthusiasm among freshman this year.
He attributes the success of the election to several things. “It could be the Web-based voting system which is better than Telnet and it could be our publicity, which was better, that resulted in the higher turnout,” Duszlak said.
The new senate will meet for the first time this Monday, Sept. 30.
“I am looking forward to meeting more people,” newly elected Towers area senator Peter Nabozny said.
“I would like to increase the involvement that students have in student government ? the student body is divided and I would like to develop a bond between students so that groups come together,” he said.
Class Councils
The Class Council elections also took place for the freshman, sophomore and junior classes.
The Sophomore Class Council election was notable because five of the nine elected members ran on the same ticket.The idea came from sophomores who were involved in last year’s class council and decided to run again this year.
“Earlier this year, we all kind of sat down and decided that we wanted to continue our work on class council and we encouraged those people who we knew were hard workers to represent with us,” sophomore and class council member Emily Hickey said.”We thought it would be best to pool resources.”
The freshman elections were divided in two ? one for the Residential Quad area and another for the Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls each area with four open seats.The turnout for the class was 28 percent with about 258 students voting.
“I wish [the turnout] would have been higher,” SA President Lonny Mallach said. “It was higher last year, but in comparison to other elections that’s still a reasonable turnout.”
“I’m pretty excited,” freshman and newly elected Class Council member Kay Colner said.”I was really nervous because I knew that only one person wasn’t going to get a seat and if that was me I would have felt singled out.”Colner hopes to organize hall movie nights, socials and competitions.
The Junior Class Council election had the lowest turnout of the classes. Junior and returning member of Class Council, Noah Kuschel hopes to continue to create programming similar to last year like the popular bowling alley night which attracted over 200 people and the masseuse night during finals week.
Student Association election resultsQuad Senator (220)Stephanie Yurchyk (73)Thomas Hayes (72)Ben Ratner (62)
Frat Quad Senator (41)Alex Voetsch (20)Jake Luft (13)Warren Fong (4)
SuE B. Senator (129)Matthew Goldblatt (50)Siddharth Parameswaran (31)Shivani Patel (22)
Towers Senator (126)Peter Nabozny (40)Monica Reyhani (34)Keith Rosenberg (19)Tyler Ballew (19)Andrew Baukney (9)
Off-Campus Senator (32)Martin Kulli (16)Justin Birzon (10)
Hill Court Senator (100)Jonathan Durfey (43)Robert Kamen (38)Matt Strabone (7)
GLC Senator (36)Tric Lunin (16)Quang Luong (6)Thomas Vaniotis (5)
Soph. Class Council (783)Jesse Bailey (84)Erin Fraser (72)Emily G. Hickey (69)Anna Tomczyk (69)Emily Medina (69)
Junior Class Council (326)Sara Finiki (64)Charlesa Ceres (59)Eric Lunin (44)Noah Kuschel (31)Andrew Baukney-Przybylski (27)
FRESHMen Class Council Michael Guerra (85)Virginia Coleman (80)David VanScott (78)Kay Colner (77)Robert Reynolds (74)Matt Goldblatt (72)Stephanie Yurchyk (60)Ben Ratner (54)James Wang (52)Sameer Godiwala (51)
Desai can be reached at mdesai@campustimes.org.
