By Grace Romund (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 21, 2012
The votes are in. Student Union Society (SUS) elections have come to a close and the SUS Board of Directors for next year has been decided. While SUS president Carlos Vidal was reelected for another term, as many of the current board members will be graduating this semester, a whole roster of new faces will be seen in the SUS office in the upcoming year.
The most strongly supported candidate in this year’s election was SUS president candidate and incumbent Carlos Vidal who was running uncontested after VP social Wyatt Scott backed out of the race near the end of the campaigning period. Vidal won his position with 318 votes – the most votes for any one candidate this election.
Vidal seemed happy and eager to continue his work with SUS upon hearing the results of this year’s election saying, “I am very excited and very thankful to all UFV students who voted for me in this year’s General Election. It strengthens my confidence that students are happy with my leadership and I am looking forward to serving them for another exciting year.”
Just like Vidal, all of the other candidates who ran uncontested won their positions too. VP finance Samuel Broadfoot will be taking care of all things financial at SUS for another term. Current residence representative Christian Doyle who ran for VP social will also be staying on the SUS board for a second term, although in a different capacity. Taking up Doyle’s old position, residence representative, will be Sean Yusuke Webber. Jun Feng will be international students representative. Additionally, all representative-at-large candidates running yes or no campaigns won their spots on the board: Vinu Abraham, Vitor Carvalho, Debbie Ellis, Ahmed Hussein, Jay Mitchell, Ryan Petersen, Rachel Waslesky and Nicolas Willms.
Abbotsford-Chilliwack connector bus advocate and recently-elected student member of the Board of Governors Shane Potter won his SUS board position as VP east with 198 votes, while his opponent Kyle Wierks received 116 votes.
Even after standing out against what VP internal candidate Celina Beer had argued as environmental posters, Greg Stickland won the position of VP internal with 154 votes. Beer received 134. The poster issue was mentioned in the SUS Elections Committee’s (EC) General Election Report as the only minor issue during the election. No one raised a formal complaint of the posters to the EC. The report mentioned only “an informal e-mail enquiry,” but no formal complaint.
Lastly, of the three candidates that ran for VP academic it was Daniel van der Kroon who will be fulfilling the position in the upcoming year after winning the election with 104 votes. VP academic was the closest race in this year’s election. Mehtab Singh Rai, current representative-at-large who has been working closely with current VP academic Kate Nickelchok on the Where’s the Funding? campaign among other projects, lost to van der Kroon by four votes with 100. VP academic candidate Marin Beck received just 77 votes.
