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In the 2008-2009 USGA elections, 1,089 students cast their votes. Outside of MacAlister Hall, Stacey Rose (above) set up a booth for students to cast their vote on the final day, May 15.

New USGA officials elected

By: Ali Qari

Posted: 5/16/08

After over 1,000 student votes were cast, the Undergraduate Student Government Association has announced the winners of the 2008-2009 academic year general elections.

There were 25 positions up for election, with seven offices contested, nine offices unopposed and nine offices with no students running; however, voters could write in candidates for offices with no one running.

According to Stacey Rose, a graduating senior, current USGA commuter representative and this year's elections chair, many of this year's races were more tightly contested than she could remember in the past.

"I know our presidential race was uncontested ... but some of our races have been pretty heated," she said.

In the Academic Affairs Assembly, Andrew Moriarity was elected for biomedical engineering representative over Ankur Nagpal and James Breen was elected for Lebow College of Business representative over Aesha Mehta.

In the Engagement and Operations Assembly, Tristan Johnson was elected for treasurer over Rakita Thornton and Manuel Romano was elected for events director over Vaishali Rawani and Jessica Cody.

In the Student Life Assembly, James Andorko was elected for Greek Life representative over Shams Naim, Brian Leung was elected for athletics representative over Jarrett Shapiro and Julia Hoff was elected for transfer student representative over Tynishia Williams.

The uncontested offices included Kristin Smith for president, Theodore Speedy for College of Engineering representative. Jason Hollenstein for Co-op representative, Kimberly Rybak for Street Team director, and Anubhuti Singh for international students representative, Nate Smith for student organization representative, Nicholas Ruiz for media and marketing director, Michael Johnson for personnel director and Daniel Reisler for technology director.

Two vacant offices received enough write-in votes for candidates to be appointed. Other students have also contacted Rose about open positions but did not win enough votes for automatic appointments. The status of all write-in candidates will be determined over the next week.

1,089 votes were cast in total, according to Rose. Voting was held entirely online between May 8 and May 15.

The number of votes cast fell slightly when compared to last year.

"I encountered a lot of students when I was tabling and some of them had no idea this was going on," Rose said.

Last year, 1,224 students voted and in 2006, 1,167 students voted.

"[Election coverage] was in The Triangle for two weeks, we used the Drexel Daily Digest every day voting was open, we had posters all over campus, we were handing out giveaways … we had individual candidates campaigning. I'm not really sure how we missed [voters]," Rose said.

Rose said the reason Drexel students could ignore all the information about the elections is because they are very busy.

"We can't force anyone to vote," Rose said.

Next year, though Rose will have graduated, she said she hopes the USGA will put on more promotional events throughout elections week.

Candidates have until May 20 at 5 p.m. to decline their elected position and to contest any election. According to Rose, elections aren't contested often, but candidates can bring charges against one another for campaigning incorrectly, using tools such as mass e-mail or character defamation to gain an unfair advantage in the race.