Unofficial results; review process; referendum passes; voter turnout down
The unofficial results of the CSA general election were announced on Monday Mar. 10:
Peter Miller is the new Academic and University Affairs Commissioner; Sonia Chwalek is the new Communications and Corporate Affairs Commissioner; Sonali Menezes is the new External Affairs Commissioner; Brittany Skelton is the new Local Affairs Commissioner; and Colin Morris is the new Human Resources and Operations Commissioner.
The unofficial results reveal some landslide victories and some tight races.
In the race for the new Academic and University Affairs Commissioner, Miller accrued nearly twice as many votes as his opponent, Kimmi Snyder. For the Communications and Corporate Affairs Commissioner, Chwalek was just 112 votes ahead of her opponent, Matt Brown, and River Roy placed a more distant third in that race. Menezes, who ran uncontested for the position of External Affairs Commissioner, was easily elected. In the race for Local Affairs Commissioner, Skelton acquired more votes than her two opponents, Caitlin Drew Zeran and Luna Shen, combined. Lastly, Morris received over twice as many votes as David Alton for the position of Human Resources and Operations Commissioner.
However, these results are subject to change. The CSA elections office will be conducting an audit on the election results, and the results will not be confirmed until the first week of April at the CSA Board of Directors meeting. Reportedly, incorrect or missing information on the online ballot may have compromised some votes cast in the first hours of the election. As well, Brown is said to be contesting Chwalek’s narrow victory in the race for Communications and Corporate Affairs Commissioner. Candidates have 15 days after the election to submit an appeal to the CSA Electoral Officer.
For the nominees to the Board of Directors, for which there may be two from every college, only one candidate, Shalu Atwal from the College of Arts, was unelected. Brendan Campisi and Brad Breedom each bested Atwal by a close margin – neither more than 40 votes. Tula Selvarajah, who ran uncontested, is the new College of Biological Sciences representative. Sarah Hafuth and Claire Segeren will both represent the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences on the Board.
The Student Space Initiative referendum question has also squeaked through. The Initiative required 20 per cent of CSA members to vote in the election in order to be ratified, and the official turnout was 20.7 per cent (4,053 votes cast out of 19,584 undergraduate students). The referendum passed with 2,173 votes in the affirmative (53.61 per cent of total votes cast).
Kat Lucas, Interhall Council President and leader of the Student Space Initiative, said that the referendum team was “more worried about reaching quorum than we were about winning.”
Lucas added that the team was “prepared to accept the referendum not passing if it was what the students decided, since it comes down to what they want and how they would like their fees to be spent.”
Over the next two months, the team will begin to draft the Student Space Initiative committee and solicit feedback for the development a set of policies. Over the summer, they will put out a call for membership and the team hopes to begin installing furniture in the Fall of 2014.
Voter turnout was down by a fairly substantial margin from 2013. Last year, 26.53 per cent of undergraduate students cast their ballot, compared to 20.7 per cent this year. That is a decrease of roughly 1,200 students. If those numbers are anything to go by, one of the key challenges for next year’s Executive will be to inform students about why they should take an interest in the CSA.
Some students expressed apathy in regards to on-campus politics. These are attitudes that the Executive will likely want to address in the next year.
“I wasn’t going to vote originally, but then I saw that I could abstain, so I did,” explained second-year students Chris Katsaras. “I figured it would be better to cast a non-vote than to not vote at all, especially since I still don’t know what the CSA is.”
“I actually didn’t vote until [March 7] because I wasn’t interested in the whole election process,” explained second-year student Shelby Cady. “This guy came into my class who seemed interesting and excited about what he could do, so I eventually gave him my vote.”
Officially, the University of Guelph’s Central Student Association was founded in 1978 as a not-for-profit, autonomous, student-run organization designed to give undergraduate students an opportunity to have their voices and opinions heard. In the wider bureaucratic forum, the CSA gives students an opportunity to raise issues with decisions made by the university Board of Directors and administration.
Today, the CSA also helps fund on-campus student groups while organizing awareness weeks, concerts, and other events designed to engage students. The student Bus Pass and the Bullring restaurant are also run by the CSA.