The Committee on Student Elections (CSE) announced Friday that Anna Du will serve as the freshman class president for the Class of 2018. Alex Darwiche, Heidi Woll, Elise Rodrigues, Kwame Alston, Alberto Pepe Muniz and Sarah Zappone were elected to be class senators.
The online election for the Student Government Association (SGA) freshman representatives, which kicked off Monday night at 8 pm, had to be reset 12 hours later because the initial ballot posted omitted some of the candidates.
Candidates had mixed reactions to the CSE’s handling of the error. Freshman Abigail Annear, who ran for a senator position, wrote in an email to The News-Letter that she found out that her name was omitted from the initial ballot while attending a “Meet The Candidates” event in the Fresh Food Café (FFC).
“When I received the first text from a friend alerting me that my name wasn’t on the ballot, … I immediately emailed the chair of the Committee [CSE], who didn’t respond for over a half an hour,” Annear wrote. “Deciding to confront the CSE officials at the event, I waited and waited for them to show. By the time they arrived, an hour had already elapsed since the voting period began, texts had piled up notifying me of the ballot discrepancy.”
Mia Berman, who also ran for Senate, wrote in an email to the News-Letter that she thought the reset hurt the election because the votes that had been previously cast were voided.
“I would have preferred them to simply have added the names as soon as they noticed the glitch, or looked at the data from voting afterwards to see if it caused that large of a gap in votes, and then find a way to account for them either through a runoff election or some other method,” Berman wrote.
After the new ballot was posted, presidential candidate Sarah Harrison was listed as a senatorial candidate. Instead of resetting the election again, the CSE corrected the error quickly.
“I think the CSE handled it professionally,” Harrison wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “They emailed me back with a satisfactory explanation. In the end, they...counted write-in presidential votes that were cast before the glitch was edited.”
Despite questions over the handling of the election, some candidates said their experiences with the campaign process and the SGA were positive overall.
“I’m constantly in ‘orientation mode’ in the sense that I want to sit down next to random freshmen and get to know them every day, [and] the election has given me a chance to do that,” Woll said.
Annear, who ran with Woll on a common ticket, echoed this sentiment.
“Regardless of the election results today, I got the opportunity to meet so many more people that I may not have gotten to know otherwise,” Annear wrote. “Particularly within my coalition [of candidates running on the same ticket], we didn't know each other extremely well before running together. I feel like I have made lasting friendships.”
Berman wrote that she was also impressed with the standing SGA.
“I thought that they were doing a lot of really good work that would greatly benefit the Hopkins community,” Berman wrote. “I understand there are current concerns about how responsive the SGA is to students, but I heard a real interest from [SGA] members to solve that.”
Jason Dealessi, a senator candidate, wrote in an email to The News-Letter that he wanted to run for an SGA position to lead his class and hear their opinions.
“I ran for SGA Senator because I was involved with student government in high school and heard that Hopkins provided students with more freedom to make decisions and to lead in student government,” DeAlessi wrote.
Other candidates ran with specific issues in mind that they wanted to address through SGA membership.
“Whether I win or lose, I will want to facilitate a change in the school’s response to sexual assault allegations and an increased transparency in where our tuition is actually going,” Harrison wrote.
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