Junior Antoine Perretta and sophomore Jim Francescon were elected as the All Undergraduate Student Association Senate president and vice president by 120 votes Thursday in a campus-wide election by undergraduates.
The Perretta-Francescon ticket defeated their opponents Javi Ogaz and Joel Portman with a 844-724 vote.
The results were delayed due to a new voting process.
A recent change in the voting process extended voting from one day to three days, and also allowed students to vote in person at voting tables around campus.
This change had a great impact on voter turnout, which increased 9 percent from last year with 34 percent of the about 4,000 undergraduates voting.
Originally, the results were to be announced last Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. but were not released until Thursday at 9 a.m.
“The only problem that I saw was in getting the results in a timely manner from UTS. I really don’t think that this problem had a negative impact on the election; just take a look at the large increase in voter turnout,” said Tim Healy, HRTM senator.
Perretta and Francescon along with the other newly elected senators will sit on the Senate for the upcoming 2009-2010 academic year.
Perretta and Francescon ran on a platform of “Pioneers First.”
They said that efforts will be made to unite students, faculty and alumni as pioneers by encouraging pride and spirit throughout campus.
“We currently have much opportunity to improve our campus in various ways, including: traditions, alumni relations, campus involvement, connecting various organizations and bringing our student body together.B These are all items I hope to accomplish over the next year and that is the reason why I ran for AUSA senate,” said Perretta.
Other elected senators also plan to bring together the student body by promoting diversity on campus. Diversity was one of the top issues discussed by candidates throughout the election.
Senior Sen. Lalu Abebe also echoed statements of unity by saying, “a big part of bringing students together deals with bridging gaps between groups on campus that are separated because of cultural and/or racial identities. So many of our student groups are trying to achieve the same things and we often do not realize it because we are so focused on our differences rather than our common interests.”
Other issues various candidates focused on included sustainability, school spirit, the transparency of the AUSA senate and university administration.
“Our university has one of the highest voter turnouts in this great nation, and I would like to continue toB set the precedent for turnout in the future,” said Dillon Doyle, newly elected on-campus senator.
“The current Senate made substantial efforts to make sure that people knew they could vote. B Both tickets for President and Vice President also worked really hard to target students who don’t typically vote to make sure they became familiar with the issues, and then encouraged them to vote,” said Perretta.
Election Results
President and Vice President: Antoine Perretta and Jim Francescon
Daniels College of Business: Natasha Kiemnec
HRTM: Tim Healy
Korbel School of International Studies: Sean Johnson
Performing Arts: Lucia Thomas
SECS: Lynsey Simon
SOCS: Tyler Gerk
Sophomore Senator: Milan Chatterjee and Max Ravech
Junior Senator: Chris Fettig and Nathan Pearson
Senior Senator: Lalu Abebe and Tuyen Trisa Bui
On Campus Senator: Dillon Doyle and Sonia Wilk
Off Campus Senator: Katie Bernell and Matt Johnson
