THE students’ union’s full-time officer positions for the 2015-2016 academic year have been revealed with final year international relations student Ajing Jipur voted in as president.
SU bar Divas was set up as the venue for the night as general manager Stuart Rice read out the results through a microphone on stage to a room crammed full of eager and anxious campaign teams.
Campaigns ended at 5pm Friday 28th and with results being published only a short hour later, candidates did not have long to wait for the results of their hard work.
The first successful candidate to be revealed was that of education officer.
Robiu Salisu was named the first FTO for next year with 1791 votes to 481 votes to re-open nominations.
Following the withdrawal of current education officer Ilana Cohen, after what she named a ‘tough few weeks of stress’ Salisu found himself up against an online RON campaign. Organised by students Josh Hale, Chloe Hutchinson, Richie Stewart and Stephanie Paisley Lockwood, the RON campaign called for ‘a more democratic election’ and demanded a choice of more than one candidate for the role.
Josh Hale said: “There needs to be competition so that each candidate has to be the best they can be. It’s nothing against the one candidate that’s running. If there was a selection and he was the better candidate he would get my vote.
“I want more options on who to vote for. I think the union constitution shouldn’t allow a single candidate – it’s not democratic for one person to be running against themselves.
“I know it’s difficult circumstances as Ilana dropped out but Ilana rerunning put a lot of people off for going for the role knowing that re-runs nearly always get re-elected and also because they had a lot of faith in her.
“I think it’s the union’s job to automatically re-open nominations, I don’t think the students should have to run a RON campaign.”
The next position to be filled was that of future president Jipur who won with a resounding 1105 votes. The closest runner-up was Steph Dalton who received 805 votes.
“It’s been a really long, tiring and stressful week but I’m just thrilled to have won,” said Ajing.
Final year Alys Chapman quickly followed in his footstep as she was elected to societies and services officer with 928 votes. It was a close victory with only 49 votes between Chapman and runner up Deonte Jam.
Sports, one of the most highly contested positions with six candidates, was won by Felix Mmeka. An elated campaign team was there to congratulate him as Rice announced the results of the final stage of the vote.
The votes were divided into six stages with the candidate with the least amount of votes eliminated at the end of each round. At the next stage, this eliminated candidates votes were distributed amongst the remaining candidates.
Welfare, the most contested position of the night, was won by third year psychology student Lloyd Harris who stormed the first round of voting with a whopping 744 votes. In the final round it was between Lloyd Harris and runners-up Verity Williams (401) and Keji Olamide Ajewole (613).
Some 2,500+ students cast their votes, greatly eclipsing the number of votes in recent years, to voice their opinions of who they want to lead the students’ union to success in the next academic year.
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