The Student Government Association (SGA) held elections last weekend for class council positions. Voting was open from Thursday at 9 p.m. until Sunday at 11:59 p.m. 1,543 students from the freshmen, sophomore and junior classes voted for their next year’s class president and six senators.
The current SGA members tried to advertise the election as much as possible and spread awareness so students would vote. “To advertise elections, we have sent out school-wide e-mails like we have for all elections,” wrote Rohit Dayal, the head of the committee for student elections. Current SGA President Mark Dirzulaitis encouraged student participation in the elections.
“Your class president . . . and senators . . . play key roles in executing SGA student life projects, making student group funding decisions, planning class events and representing your voice in meetings with administrators,” explained Dirzulaitis in his e-mail reminder to students to vote.
Since there have been no issues with advertising, the SGA doesn’t plan to change their policies for next year. This year, the only additional accommodations were for candidates because of prior commitments due to Easter and Passover. The election process went smoothly. “We have, till now, had no violations in this election,” Dayal wrote.
For the class of 2012 senior class, Elizabeth Duval and Luke Sand ran for class president. Sand won the election with 51.25 percent of the vote while Duval received 37.41 percent. The other 11.34 percent of the votes went to write-ins and abstentions.
“I am happy I won! I am very excited for next year, and I’m looking forward to planning some awesome events,” Sand wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
As president, Sand hopes to continue SGA’s legacy from this year and hopes to continue bringing musical performances to campus. In terms of his campaign, Sand’s was mostly a digital campaign because he was unavailable on campus.
“My campaign consisted basically of word of mouth and online videos. I tried to make the videos short and funny so that people would watch them more than once, and the main goal of the videos was name recognition,” Sand wrote.
Out of the eight senate candidates who ran, in descending order of votes received, Kirk Sabnani, PK Smith, Erin Reilly, Benjamin Googe, Scott Barrett and Stephnaie Geller won the election. Voting time was heaviest on Friday afternoon. On the other hand, voting time was slowest on Saturday night. In total, 441 juniors voted this year.
For the Class of 2013 junior class, Chris Fernandez ran against Alexandra Larsen for class president. Larsen won the election with 61.20 percent of the vote while Fernandez received 22.8 percent. The other 16.00 percent of the votes went to write-ins and abstentions. A total of 500 sophomore students voted this year.
Out of the eight candidates who ran, in descending order of votes received for the senate elections, Nick Trenton, Moses Song, Xuanni Mimi Gu, Archie Henry, Cameron Ahmad and Kiran Parasher emerged victorious. Larsen declined to comment on her victory. For the sophomore class, voting too was strongest on Friday, morning and afternoon, and weakest on Saturday night.
For the Class of 2014 sophomore class, Patrick Hampton and Merrill Anovick ran for class president. Anovick won the election with 56.00 percent of the vote while Hampton received 31.00 percent. The other 13.00 percent of the votes went to write-ins and abstentions. A total of 602 freshmen voted this year, making the class of 2014 the class with the largest voting participation. Out of the nine candidates who ran in the race for senator positions, in descending order of votes received, Michael St. Germain, Alex Schupper, Minerva Kim, Debra Schwitzer, Alex Dash and Hyun-Sik Choi won.
Anovik explained his campaign to run for reelection. “I ran on a platform built around the Freshman Class Council’s accomplishments, specifically the Freshman Formal and High Table. Our council also worked with the SGA as a whole to increase SAC funding and bring large events, like the Wiz Khalifa concert, to campus,” Anovik wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Anovik hopes his experience from this year can help establish connections and contacts which he can use to better next year. To get the word out about the election, Anovik mainly used Facebook to spread his slogan “Not pre-med but always on call.”
“I want to make sure the students have a voice in what the University decides to do with the property,” Anovik said.
