After 5 days of SGA elections, Chief of Communications Nadia Bednarczuk ‘19 announced on Sunday night the winners of nine races for positions on next year’s SGA executive board.
In the race for the SGA presidency, Maryum Qasim ‘20 narrowly beat Ali Plucinski ‘20 by just 16 votes. This was the closest victory among all seven contested elections. 18 percent of voters chose to abstain from selecting a presidential candidate. Qasim, the former SGA Chair of Equity and Inclusion, is studying abroad this semester and did not appear at speech night. Plucinski, who is on campus this semester, wrote in a speech read by SGA’s communications chief about her diverse involvement on campus and previous SGA experience. Hana Kristensen ‘20 won the race for SGA Vice President with a plurality of 41.55 percent.
811 students, around 43 percent of the student population voted. In all elections, a significant portion of voters abstained from voting for a candidate. In the race for Chief of Finance, three of the five candidates received fewer votes than abstentions. For the three-candidate Chair of Equity and Inclusion race, abstentions were second to the winning candidate, receiving 26.88% of votes. The highest number of abstentions came in the race for Chief of Communications. Though abstentions were not higher than any candidate’s vote count, 223 students, or 27.49 percent, chose to abstain.
The races for Chair of Residential Affairs and Chair of Sustainability were both uncontested. In both, just over 20 percent of students abstained from voting.
In the seven contested elections, Conor Xanders ‘20 took home the biggest victory as the only candidate in a contested election to be elected by a majority vote. Xanders ‘20, beat Helen Fulmer ‘21 for the Chair of Honor Council position. Xanders received 55.73 percent to Fulmer’s 28.6 percent. Both Xanders and Fulmer are current members of Honor Council and pitched themselves as experienced candidates who hope to make the student body more familiar with the Council.
In a speech, Xanders identified himself as an advocate for students: “I like to think that Dean Cardwell and I get along, but when it comes down to it, I truly believe that she and my fellow council members understand where my loyalties and priorities lie: and that is with my fellow students.”
Xanders spoke of advocacy reforms he hopes to implement, focusing on increasing student understanding of the campus Honor Code. He argued that the Chair of Honor Council should be an accessible figure that students can “come to with questions and complaints regarding [the student handbook] governs our daily life and time here at Conn.”
