By only nine votes, Brian Kelley and Molly Brown were elected as the new president and vice president of the AUSA Senate in online elections held last week.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Kelley, who will be a senior next year. “I just want to say thank you to all the students because it’s [their] vote that put us in this position and we will do everything in our power to do what the student body needs.”

Kelley’s running mate Molly Brown, who will be junior, followed Kelley’s lead and discussed one of the main issues during the campaign, communication.

“Our goal is to be more available and especially open and personable to students,” said Brown. “We really just want to make sure that the lines of communication stay open because we are here to represent everyone equally.”

Kelley and Brown won on a platform of having the university subsidize student NCAA game ticket, revamping funding of student organizations and increasing the number of student campus events. They hope these changes will increase attendance at on-campus events and boost school spirit.

“We don’t have all the details worked out yet, but have already spoken to several members of the administration and I think that the sports ticket initiative will be the first thing to happen,” said Kelley.

He continued, “There are just so many new possibilities for next year and we are going to fight hard to push our agenda.”

Both Kelley and Brown have served previously on the AUSA Senate and on-campus organizations. Kelley has been Natural Sciences and Mathematics senator, president of the Generation Mentoring Program, president of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and a member of the AED Pre-Med Society.

Brown has been the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences senator, chaired the Board of Contingency, strove to provide principled funding to organizations with emergency needs and is the administrative vice president of Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

The 1,609 total votes cast in the 2005 AUSA Senate election were up by just over 100 from last year’s election and this was encouraging to Carl Johnson, director of Student Programs and Greek Life.

“We had five really strong sets of candidates running for the president position and that definitely played a role in students getting out the vote,” he said. “In addition, this was one of the shortest voting periods we’ve ever had, but we still had a great turnout.”

Johnson added, “The administration is excited about how things went and are now eager to get things started with the newly elected members of the Senate to make next year even better than the last.”

“As far as the race itself, it was a very close,” said Johnson. “This was an election where every vote truly counted.”

Students that voted in the presidential run-off gave Kelley and Brown the nod with just over 24 percent of the vote at 387 votes.

AUSA Vice President Yusef Malik, who ran for president, and running mate Lauren Kwan came in a close second with 376 votes.

John O’Malley and Alden Schiller III finished in third at 363, Zak Brewer and Chris Sturges ended at fourth with 277 and Matt MacDonald and Daniel Goldware rounded out the candidates in fifth at 167.

After the results were read, Brewer had a look of disappointment, but was optimistic about the future of the Senate.

“I feel all right,” Brewer said. “It was a close race and I think an exciting week for everyone that I was just happy to be a part of. I think we did a good job with our campaign in bringing awareness to the problems on campus and hopefully Brian and Molly will solve them.”

In other election news, the Clean Air Wind Energy Initiative passed with 1,011 voting in favor of the act and 492 opposed. At least 500 signatures were previously needed to have the bill put on to the ballot.

The energy referendum asked students if they would support an increase in student fees by $2.50 a quarter in order for DU to begin purchasing windmill-generated energy to power several of the school’s buildings.

Other winners on Wednesday included Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences senators Aaron Hammond and Jamie Grim, Natural Sciences and Mathematics senators Victoria Villescas and Marisa Carlson and for the Daniels College of Business, Joey Ham and Clinton Emmerich.

Class senator winners were Pamela Mayer and Jeremy Neil for the seniors, Alex Lomas and Ryan Myers representing the juniors and Aaron Schwarzberg and Kelsey Yamasaki closing out the bunch for the sophomores.

James King and John Bales won as on-campus senators, while Andrew Sundet and Payson Schotters were selected as the new off-campus senators for next year.