Veronica Myers, Jahne Brown, Kosi Achife, and Sat Gupta have been elected to Student Government (SG) College Council to represent the Class of 2020.
The winners of the election were announced at 5:00 p.m. this afternoon in Reynold’s Club South Lounge, after the polls closed at 4:30 p.m. Eighteen candidates were in the running for four positions.
Myers received 224 votes, Brown received 206, Achife received 173, and Gupta received 154. Last year, 536 students voted in the first-year CC elections. This year, 654 students voted.
“Despite what some might have you think, turnout is important to me and I’m glad to see it continue to rise,” Max Freedman the Chair of Elections & Rules (E&R) said.
Brown, Achife and Myers ran on a joint platform, named #KJVA which also included candidate Andres Leland. Leland achieved the fifth largest vote total.
“I’m very excited that I won a spot as [College Council] representative and I look forward to working with the rest of the 2020 representatives and I’m very excited that three women were in the top three vote-getters” Brown said, “It’s really important that women, black people, and black women are represented on student government and I’m excited that we won.” There were four female candidates on the ballot, and three were granted positions.
Gupta’s chalk advertisements for his campaign were defaced last week by a friend of one of his opponents. Some of his ads were written over. In a few cases, the ads were edited to suggest Gupta supported Donald Trump. E&R issued a warning to the candidate who said his friend had done the chalking.
Gupta and Achife both did not answer “Yes” to The Maroon’s survey question regarding divestment. Achife abstained, saying that she "can't at this time answer a question that glosses over the complexities of foreign relations." Gupta also abstained, saying that “SG should deal with issues that are of practical importance to students, not global issues that are mostly symbolic.” Gupta is also the only new Representative that would not support a payment plan for the executive committee. The issue failed twice last year. After the last attempt to pass a pay plan was foiled by last-minute parliamentary maneuvering, its proponents said they would revive the proposal this year.
There were two E&R hearings this election cycle. The first was following the defacement of Gupta’s chalking and the second was regarding a candidate’s failure to attend a mandatory candidate’s meeting. The candidate in the second case was eliminated from the ballot.
College Council meetings are every Tuesday at 7:30 in Stuart 104, and are open to the public.
