Voter turnout triples in SGA Exec. election

The results for the 2016 Student Government Association (SGA) Executive Board elections were released Tuesday afternoon.

Current Executive Vice President Charlie Green was elected Executive President with 591 votes. Candidates Liam Haviv and John Hughes tied for second place, both earning 273 votes.

For Executive Vice President, current Sophomore Class President Anna Du won with 784 votes, followed by junior Christina Kilgariff with 316 votes.

Sophomore Class Senator John Tycher won the Executive Treasurer election unopposed, with 779 votes.

The race for Executive Secretary was composed of only write-in candidates after junior Chris Beckmann withdrew from the race last Thursday. Junior Andy Kim won with 166 votes, followed by Junior Class Senator Adelaide Morphett with 159 votes.

This year’s Executive Board elections had a total of 1371 voters, which is 22 percent of the University’s undergraduate population. This turnout was triple last year’s 458 voters, representing 8.6 percent of students.

Green, the winner of the Executive President election, is excited to serve the student body.

“I am extremely excited to serve as Executive President during my final year at Hopkins and could not think of another way I would rather contribute to the Hopkins community,” Green wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I am confident that our team will carry out what we agreed to during campaigning.”

Andy Kim, the winner of the Executive Secretary election, expressed gratitude for this opportunity and was happy that the election was competitive.

“I’m super grateful that I get to have a chance to serve the school. I feel like going into my senior year, I owe it to Hopkins that I do as much as I can to make this campus a better place,” Kim wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “The one other thing that I am very grateful for is that we had a competitive election… I think this election was a success because nearly every candidate made sure to work for people’s votes.

As I mentioned previously, as an outsider who wasn’t involved in the SGA, I wanted more integrity in the elections process, and I feel like that’s what I got.”

John Hughes, one of the Executive President candidates, is planning on running for Junior Class Council.

“I’m very glad that we had such good voter turnout, and I think that a lot of that turnout was a direct effect of the controversy that’s surrounded this election cycle,” Hughes wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “While I’m sad not to have won, I’m very glad to have participated in the process — it was an excellent opportunity for our campus to have a dialogue on what we want student government to look like, and that’s exactly the dialogue I wanted to start with my campaign.”

Executive President candidate Liam Haviv congratulated the winners of the election and was also pleased with voter turnout, noting how it indicated greater student interest in SGA.

“I would like to send a huge congrats to Charlie, Anna, John and Andy,” Haviv wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I think most people would point to the problems with the election producing the large voter turnout. And that may have truth to it. It was good that people felt invested this time though. The job of SGA is now going to be to sustain consistent care from the students and to make sure that people’s personal investment is ongoing.”

Executive Secretary candidate Adelaide Morphett praised the candidates and believes that the new SGA Executive Board will do an excellent job.

“I think we are lucky to have had the opportunity to choose from a handful of very motivated and qualified candidates this year,” Morphett wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I offer the most sincere of congratulations to Charlie, Anna, John, and Andy. I am confident they will do a tremendous job and leave Hopkins an even better institution than they found it.”

Current Executive President Jack Bartholet commented on how this year’s election brought more discussion on SGA’s role.

“I was really excited by the increased turnout this year. A lot more people voted than in the past, which is certainly a good thing. There was also a lot more discussion and interest in the role of SGA on campus, which I really appreciated. I think those are discussions which need to be ongoing,” he said. “I thought that everybody approached the issues facing our campus very thoughtfully and responsibly, and I was excited to see such discourse around campus.”

Executive Vice President-elect Anna Du and VP candidate Christina Kilgariff could not be reached for comment by press time.