SGA election winners discuss plans

Eddie O’Leary, a political science major, and Mark Brewster, a biomedical engineering major, will head the Student Government Association beginning April 25, while Katherine Cappocelli, a mass communications and business major, becomes the association’s executive director.

“The first steps will be recruiting,” O’Leary said. “I have to fill my cabinet of 15 students, appoint over 40 students to university committees and make appointments to the judicial branch. It will keep me very busy.”

O’Leary’s opposition, Sheena Davis, ran on the same ticket as Joel Harris for vice president and Omar Noor for executive director.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Davis said of the election. She also said she does not plan to serve in next year’s SGA.

“I’m focusing on graduating on time and finalizing my post-college plans,” Davis said. “I will still be involved in a few campus activities though.”

Some 1,624 students voted in this year’s election. Although with a student population nearing 28,500 the figure may not seem large, but it ranks as the highest voter turnout in VCU’s history.

“Voter turnout was excellent,” O’Leary said. “This year we have had more people then ever before.”

Despite this election having the highest voter turnout, O’Leary and Davis agreed that room for improvement exists and that flaws occurred on the voting Web site.

“We also are having some elections reforms that will include changing some of the elections rules and also making the elections Web site easier to understand,” O’Leary said.

Davis described the students’ concerns about the Web site problems.

“A number of people expressed the fact that they had difficulty voting, especially for the executive tickets,” she said. “Some students said that they could only find the names of the Senate candidates. It was probably just a Web site flaw.”

Along with O’Leary and his team, 41 senators, including Emily Reijmers, who is a political science major, are scheduled for induction into their respective offices April 26.

“I’m very happy with the overall results of the election,” Reijmers said. “I think the candidates this semester for senator really went out and worked hard for it, and the overall turnout for voting seemed larger than ever before.”