The current education officer won his campaign in a landslide victory with 77% of the vote, beating Lexi Woodward on 21%, making him the first black president of the Swansea SU in over two decades.

At the announcement, there was a unanimous cheer and chanting of his name.  Mr Raja said: “It’s still not real.”

Zahid Raja (third from left)

Mr Raja’s manifesto pledges to freeze the price of drinks in JC’s, increase the number of postgraduate bursaries available to Swansea students and reward students who take part in societies and sports in their university transcript.

Mr Raja also aims to extend the university’s wireless network EduRoam across Swansea, enabling students in private accommodation to have free broadband.

As education officer, Mr Raja has introduced the role of Subject Rep for students in each of their departments; delivered 78,000 new e-books into the library and has ended evening and Wednesday afternoon lectures for the next academic year.

Mr Raja’s campaign focused on the institutional review, which affects the university every six years. He vowed that his experience as education officer was necessary to lead the Union and university through this review in the next academic year.

He said: “My biggest priority is to make sure that our university gets through that institutional review and to secondly put our students’ union in a good place for when we move to the bay campus.”

“We need to have a real debate about how many sabbatical officers our students union should have, what they should be and how they should be spread between two campuses.

“I’d like to say thank you to all of the subject reps for anybody who had a doubt about the subject rep system, they are awesome. “

In other results, five out the six remaining sabbatical officers elected were women, including international officer Eva Donoghue and sports officer Charlotte Peters.

Eva Donoghue (centre).

Gahtan Algahtani was first out of the running with 3.5%, followed by Hassan Hamdoun with 14.6%, and Seveone Ye with 22.4 % of the vote.
Eva’s key manifesto promise is to introduce a Welcome Pack for international students upon their arrival at Swansea University.
Other manifesto points include an Erasmus Support Group for past and future Erasmus students as well as an International Student Satisfaction Survey.
Miss Donoghue said: “My biggest priority is definitely student involvement and getting the international students involved.
“I thought Eleanna did incredibly and I definitely thought she was going to win. The biggest issue we had was getting students to vote. I would like to thank Kelly Jervis and her whole house, Becki Warrillow and my campaign team.”
Eva has previously worked with the Black Students Committee after being elected to the position last year.
She also has experience working with societies, a feature she intends to use as International Officer in order to make sure all of the cultural societies gain all the support they need.

Rosie Inman.

Miss Inman promised in her manifesto to create dedicated Equality Forums to discuss all issues affecting people as well as promising to introduce a night bus service.
She also promised to make sure that pregnancy tests and sanitary products are more accessible to all students and would ensure that the Zero Tolerance policy against discrimination would be pursued, especially within sports.
Miss Inman said: “I was really happy [with the campaign] but at time there was so much of it and I didn’t think I could do it.
“A lot of the reasons I won was because of the referendum about Equalities Officer, I think a lot of people are passionate about that. But I think it probably will take quite a bit of work.”

She won the overall vote by 48%, compared to the runner up, Sion Durham, who won 33% of the vote.

Ceinwen Cloney (centre) with her supporters.

When her tenure begins, Ms Cloney will work closely with the Student Union’s Finance Manager.

Among some of Ms Cloney’s pledges are to introduce a second job fayre, introduce a shuttle bus service to the bus and train stations at the beginning and end of each term, and to produce a Society Handbook to ensure continuity for societies.

Miss Cloney, a BSc Medical Genetics student, said:  “It is very surreal at the moment. Currently quite in shock.”

Runner up Sion Durham said: “To be honest I feel absolutely amazing as long as somebody won.

“I think Ms Cloney has done exceptionally well. Although I’m second that doesn’t matter to me…hopefully she will take on what I’ve done.”