Another year has brought another set of Students’ Association members with big promises, as eight newly-elected first-years were confirmed to the SA Senate and Class Council on Monday.
First-years Elijah Bader-Gregory, Elena Junkala, Kenneth MacInTyre-Beiter, and Jayce Pak were elected as both senators and Class Council members, while first-years Lucy Du, John Conduah, Earl Bumagat, and Anthony Shi were elected solely to Class Council.
Junior and SA Elections Coordinator Garrett Briggs said the election went off without any big hitches. Earlier this year, Spring elections were mired by a voting website outage that had to be remedied with additional voting time, which prompted an unsuccessful appeal by senior Boris Sorokin, who finished second in that presidential race. This year, on the other hand, Briggs said the biggest problem was the voting link not working in portrait mode on mobile devices, which was fixed after the first day.
In total, 524 first-years—over one-third of the class—voted for 22 Senate candidates and 25 Class Council candidates. Last year, there were 510 first-year voters for 23 Senate candidates and 18 Class Council candidates. Briggs said things are looking up.
“The numbers this year are up from last year, and last year was also a high count when considering numbers from the year prior, so everything points to low election engagement starting to recover,” Briggs told the Campus Times.
