Class officer election results for the 2009-2010 school year were made public at Tuesday's SGA (Student Government Association) meeting. Voter turnout for the classes of 2010 and 2011 was a little lower than usual, with around 300 voters per class, while participation in the competitive class of 2012 race was very high, with a turnout of 667 students.
Affan Sheikh, who ran unopposed, retained his office as president of the class of 2010. Current class of 2011 President Nick Gilson, also an unopposed incumbent, maintained his position as well. The only contested presidential race was that of the Class of 2012. Ben McGuiggan kept up the successful incumbent pattern, emerging as the victor in a close race.
In the senatorial elections, the competitiveness of each race diminished inversely to class standing; The rising senior class had seven candidates, the class of 2010 race had eight candidates and the ballot for rising sophomores had fourteen contenders. The class of 2010 elected AJ Blood, Abby Duggan, Dea Lovy, Jake Meth, Tim Miller and Viann Nguyen to represent them in next year's SGA. The class of 2011 senators will be Daniel De Leon, Arjun Kapur, Alexander Lachman, Saharsh Patel, Daniel Teran and Justin Waite. The highly competitive freshman race resulted with the following students as senators: Mark Dirzulaitis, Paul Han, Ardi Mendoza, Karen Poreh, PK Smith and Stephanie Suser.
According to CSE (Committee on Student Elections) Chair Alieu Kanu, the election "did not run as well as we would have wanted to, but it was pretty decent." Kanu cites the timing of the election during Spring Fair weekend as a possible cause of low voter turnout. If the timing is similar next year, he suggests that a voting booth equipped with computers and Internet access be set up at Spring Fair, in order to get more students to vote. Nevertheless, the election seemed to have run smoothly in comparison to this year's SGA executive elections.
"There were no disqualifications, no issues and one minor error happened for the class of 2011, but it was fixed," Kanu said.
Kanu refers to sophomore Teran being accidentally left off of the ballot for the class of 2011 senatorial race from 7 a.m. to about noon on the day voting started. However, Teran's win made this a minor issue. Voting ran from Friday at 7 a.m. to Sunday at 11:59 p.m.
