The election results for the Student Union Society’s (SUS) annual elections were presented at the SUS board meeting on Tuesday.
Gurvir Gill was elected as president with a 58.5 per cent of the vote. A total of 540 people voted in the presidential poll. Gill was elected on a platform of making “positive change” by creating a “student day,” a day of free food and positive messages, and “creating traditions” unique to UFV on campus. Gill was running against one other candidate, Cameron Stephan.
Alyson Gher-White was elected as vice-president external receiving 65.9 per cent in favour, out of 525 voters. She campaigned uncontested on issues of student outreach, promoting Student Union functions, and making sure that students feel safe and have fun.
Jaleen Mackay defeated Manbir Sandhar and was elected as vice-president internal, receiving 45.5 per cent of 536 votes. Mackay presented a comprehensive plan to revise Student Union policies, improve budgeting, as well as advocate for “open education” and student engagement.
Only three of the eight available representative positions had candidates running for them, each uncontested.
Cody Dumas was reelected as aboriginal rep and received 61.6 per cent in favour, running for college of arts rep; Andrew Stahl was elected with 62.5 per cent voting yes; Ekanki Chawla was elected as faculty of sciences rep, receiving 64.7 per cent voting yes.
The election saw a total of 540 students participate by voting, a significant decrease from last year’s voter turnout of 1350.
Sevrina Sharma, the chief electoral officer (CEO) was supposed to present the results at the board meeting on Tuesday. However she wasn’t able to be there and the report was instead presented by vice-president internal, Ashmeet Saran. In the report it was highlighted that multiple candidates received warnings for policy violation offences.
On March 25, Sharma received two complaints from a candidate, one was about another candidate having their Facebook promotion page running during the voting period. This complaint was overruled.
The other complaint was that the candidate had posters still up on March 20th, after the campaigning period had closed. This is a violation of election policies and SUS election rules that say that candidates cannot “campaign during any part of the election that is not the campaign period.” It was explicitly stated that the campaigning period ended on the 19th. However, the electoral committee decided that this was a “grey area.”
Other warnings took place on March 9, when Sharma was informed that two candidates were being promoted by a current SUS board member on Facebook. The candidates were given their first warning.
On March 13, Sharma was informed that a current SUS board member was promoting a candidate.
On March 21, Sharma received a complaint about a candidate’s Facebook page sending notifications encouraging someone to vote for them. This candidate was given their second warning.
Sharma also provided SUS with a list of recommendations for following elections, including requiring candidates to delete the social media platforms after campaign period, and accept late nominations for vacant positions.
As written in her elections reported presented to the board, she suggested that nomination packages be accepted for vacant positions after the nomination deadline. “The CEO received emails from two different individuals who were interested in running for board positions. They understood that they had missed the nomination period, but hoped there was a way for them to still run in the election since no one else had applied for the position,” the report read.
The exact same recommendations were brought to the board by last year’s CEO Gurv Brar. Then SUS president Thomas Davies told The Cascade that the incoming SUS Board “would have to put some work into this over the summer in finding the best way to incorporate that into our policies.” However, the policies were never updated to include the recommendations.
The new board will fill their positions in May.
