Students First dominates student elections

Jacqueline Perlin
Assistant News Editor
The unofficial results of this year’s student elections have been announced.
While most of the candidates had been acclaimed to their positions, the candidate positions for the York Federation of Students’ (YFS) Schulich director and Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) director were both voted on by the student body and awarded to the candidates from the Students First slate.

Vanessa Hunt, the incoming YFS president for the 2011-2012 school year, said that her team of appointed YFS directors and executives worked extremely hard to get the remainder of her slate elected.
Hunt, however, did point out that there was a voter turnout of about five percent this year compared to the 13 to 14 percent that voted last year.
Obinna Oraka, the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) for the elections, said there is no set percentage of students who must vote in the elections, and that the winner must only hold a majority.
VP students Rob Tiffin said this illustrates not many students are engaged in the elections process.
“I think everyone would like to see a much higher percentage of people participating in the elections, but this is also a problem in the federal and provincial elections,” he said.
Nevertheless, Hunt stressed that the results are close to the numbers in a regular election and that the numbers show that students still care and want to see a democratic process at York.
Both LA&PS rep Jessica Thyriar and Schulich School of Business rep Sangha Jaspal won by a significant margin in the elections.
Thyriar – who received 823 more votes than opposition candidate Jonathan Jupiter – said she was excited, and explained that when the term begins on May 1, she intends on beginning to lobby the administration for internships and co-op opportunities for students.
Jaspal, who won 69 more votes than his opponent, Benzi Yeung, said he plans on extending the hours in the Bronfman Business Library.
Oraka explained the student union board must ratify the results, and that there is still an extra ballot box that needs to be counted as well.
The box contains the votes of individuals who were not found in the system during the election period and had to have their names forwarded to the administration to confirm their faculty and enrolment status.
“The numbers are not significant enough to affect the LA&PS numbers, but it’s significant enough to affect the Schulich director for the position,” said Oraka, who added it would take about two weeks to hear back from the university.
Hunt pointed out that the smaller number of Schulich votes can be attributed to the fact there is no polling station in Schulich, and that the population is generally smaller compared to LA&PS.
“I’m sure there wasn’t a huge amount of students from Schulich who came out and voted,” said Hunt, who pointed out there are 24,000 students in LA&PS.
According to Oraka, the polling stations were located as close to Schulich as possible, though they were unable to obtain permission to erect a station within the college.
YFS executive director Jeremy Salter said polling station locations are booked through the Student Community & Leadership Development (SC&LD), and that they have attempted to book a Schulich polling booth in the past without success.