SGA Judicial Committee withholds election results

The Student Government Association has voted against verifying the results of the 2016 Presidential election until March 23 at 2:30 p.m. according  to an email from SGA Chief Justice Vincent Ryan to members of the student organization.

Despite holding elections from March 15-17, the Student Government Association has not yet announced the president-elect and vice president-elect.

According to the SGA Constitution, unofficial election results are posted to the organization’s website no later than two business days after the close of the election.  The official results of the election are posted as soon as they have been confirmed by the Judiciary Committee. If there is contention of the election, results are withheld until the grievances have been resolved.

In a three-way contest, incumbent Pres. Suraj “Sunshine” Telhaj and his running mate junior Tristan Ledbetter faced competition from Presidential hopeful junior Katie Clark and her running mate sophomore Kedji Abazi and junior MaryBeth DeMarco and her running mate sophomore Sarah Kilmon.

The candidates participated in a debate on Jan. 14, where they discussed a slew of topics that are of concern to students, including changes they planned to implement, and personal hurdles they would have to overcome if elected into their respective offices and diversity in the faculty.

“One of the things that Dr. Rao has done is put in training online to help staff understand of those issues. Right now it’s the only solution that’s been presented,” Clark said. “I think that as student government our job is to put that through checks and balances to make sure that these steps he suggested are being implemented.”

DeMarco said the student government’s relationship with organizations around campus played a critical role in how successful it would be at solving various student concerns on campus.

“We should continue working with the partnerships that we already have and ICF, the intercultural festival,” DeMarco said.

Telhan said if he were to be re-elected, he would look to strengthen the influence of various student leaders on campus.

“We want to run SGA next year by empowering the student body. There’s a ton of student leaders on campus but I feel like we only interact with such a few amount of people, if elected we really want to empower leaders.”

Members of the SGA with access to the unverified election results are prohibited from disclosing information to the public.

Print News Editor, Fadel Allassan

Fadel is a sophomore print journalism major. He is fluent in English, French and Sarcasm, and he probably doesn’t like you. Fadel enjoys writing about politics and making people drive him to Cook-Out. // Facebook | LinkedIn

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