The Committee on Student Elections (CSE) announced on Tuesday that the New Horizons ticket won the Student Government Association (SGA) executive board elections, defeating the HopForward ticket.
The 2017-2018 SGA executive board will consist of Noh Mebrahtu as executive president, AJ Tsang as executive vice president, Mi Tu as executive treasurer and Rushabh Doshi as executive secretary.
Mebrahtu, who is the sophomore class president, won with 718 votes, and current executive vice president and junior Anna Du followed with 622 votes.
Tsang, a sophomore class senator, received 755 votes, beating freshman class senator Alex Walinskas, who won 545 votes.
Doshi, a freshman class senator, was elected with 757 votes, while junior Lucas Rosen received 531 votes.
Tu, a sophomore senator, won with 775 votes, surpassing the 522 votes for sophomore Kush Mansuria.
A total of 1,421 voters participated in the election, an increase of 50 from last year.
Mebrahtu attributed the win to his ticket’s ability to work together.
“I think when we ran, we ran as a very cohesive unit,” he said. “I think in that cohesiveness, we garnered votes from people that we would never be able to reach on our own.”
Members of New Horizons were excited to begin enacting their platform.
“This is a campaign of ideas, and there was such a humbling sense of hope and change,” Tsang said.
Doshi also noted that New Horizons’ effort to include each individual student in their platform was crucial to their victory.
All four New Horizons candidates praised HopForward for their campaign. Tsang mentioned that he wishes to implement some of their ideas, such as building entrepreneurship spaces on campus.
“We would also like to thank them for running against us and competing,” Mebrahtu said. “Without them, we don’t think that there would be such a large voter turnout, and through that competition we were able to foster more student engagement.”
HopForward executive president candidate Du reflected on her experience campaigning.
“I am so grateful for the opportunity,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “We congratulate the other team.”
Rosen was happy to have participated in the election. He cited his ticket’s pragmatism and lack of ambition as the campaign’s key problems.
“We aren’t those wide-eyed, bushy-tailed underclassmen anymore,” Rosen wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Obviously the student body was looking for more ambition on a lot of things, and if I could go back I’d probably be more ambitious too.”
In particular, Rosen felt his ticket should have taken a stronger stance on supporting minorities on campus.
“There’s so much I didn’t know before this campaign season about the issues facing certain groups around our school,” he wrote. “And it was too little too late when I started to realize just how different my Hopkins experience was [compared to] that of many others.”
Rosen is confident that New Horizons will do an excellent job as the executive board in the coming year.
“I’m fully optimistic that New Horizons will improve this school and the perception of SGA,” he wrote.
HopForward executive treasurer candidate Kush Mansuria shared Rosen’s sentiment.
“I am proud of the hard work our team put into this campaign and enjoyed working with them,” Mansuria wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I wish New Horizons good luck and look forward to seeing what they accomplish next year.”
Walinskas said that she is grateful for the opportunity to be a part of HopForward and plans to remain active in SGA.
“I have been so grateful for this experience to practice being a leader on campus and work with an incredible team,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I am still just as dedicated to the SGA and looking forward to running again for Senate this spring.”
Overall, the members of New Horizons were happy with the election process. Tsang voiced his appreciation for the high voter turnout.
“I think that, especially in comparison to previous elections, it was pretty good. If you look at data over the past 10 years or so, our numbers are the highest since 2014,” Tsang said. “I think part of that was driven by the fact that there were two full tickets running for the first time since 2014.”
Tsang also enjoyed the debate between the two tickets that occurred Thursday night.
Tu, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the debate.
“I think [the debate] is really useful for students to know our platforms, and who we are,” she said. “But the attendance appears to be a little low, because the location was a little far from the main campus.”
Tu also believes there should have been more open conversation between the two tickets.
“We didn’t really get a chance to respond to our opponents for every question. So it’s not really a debate for the most part, it’s more like a forum,” she said.
New Horizons also discussed their plans for next year.
“One of our biggest platforms obviously is civic engagement,” Mebrahtu said. “We’ll be working on creating a committee for that and bringing students from across the campus to be involved.”
Tsang highlighted the ticket’s plan to support University contract workers currently fighting for a $15 per hour minimum wage, among other demands.
“[W]e’re also going to work on JHU workers rights,” Tsang wrote.” We want to [reach] a resolution before the year is even over, and make sure that gets through.”
The ticket listed a number of challenges they predict they will face, such as obstacles from the administration and divisions in the student body, as well as within SGA itself.
Doshi hopes that New Horizons’ focus on civic engagement will help them overcome these challenges.
Despite these obstacles, all members of New Horizons look forward to serving in their positions and hope to use their positions to create change at Hopkins.
“[We hope] to actually affect and influence the campus and the current administration,” Mebrahtu said. “With the genuine issues that are facing the student body, I think that’s the ultimate gift, to be given this ability and this position to do so.”
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