In a record-breaking turnout, approximately 20 percent greater than any Student Senate election before, Erik Michaels-Ober and Julie Beckenstein were elected Student Body President and Vice President and Steven Kling was elected Vice President for Finance. In the first, invalidated election, these positions were won by other candidates.

Following the initial vote on April 6 and 7, Kristina Wiltsee and Hussein Al Baya beat Michaels-Ober and Beckenstein for the positions of President and Vice President by two votes, and Daniel Papasian beat Kling for Vice President of Finance by 43 votes. These results were invalidated because the online elections server was down for almost three-fourths of the total time allotted for voting. Many senators argued that students were not properly informed of the extension of the election and consequently didn’t get to vote.

In the revote, Michaels-Ober and Beckenstein received 904 votes, beating Wiltsee by 82 votes. Kling received 773 votes, 16 more than Papasian. In third place for the presidential/vice presidential position were Jason Pock and Julian Chen with 24% of the votes. Senator Tim Bowen opted to leave the race before the second election, though he still received write-in votes.

Michaels-Ober, although neither he nor any of the other candidates participated in the Senate debate over whether to validate the results, believes that the high turnout of the second election indicated that many students were unable to vote in the first election. He is now the fourth ethics, history, and public policy major in a row to serve as Student Body President.

Some senators at last Thursday’s Senate meeting were still skeptical about the revote results.

 “There were a couple of people who were upset,” said Kling, a junior electrical and computer engineering major, about the validation of the second election.

Senator Matt Brooks, who was originally in opposition to a revote, was one of the most verbal senators against the validation of the second election results.

 “I believed that if there was a revote, the candidates involved would be unfairly disenfranchised on a few levels: mainly, all candidates had knowledge of the campus’ opinion toward them,” said Brooks. “In my opinion, and several other senators’, the second election should never have been held because the results of such an election would have been tainted and distorted by knowledge of the first election.” 

At the Senate meeting, Brooks suggested that a new policy be used by the Senate in light of the fact that there were problems present in both elections; drawing upon election rules that the U.S. government most recently used in the controversial 2000 presidential race, Brooks suggested that Senate and the Graduate Student Assembly determine who would serve in the Senate’s executive offices.

Brooks made a point to say that he only objected to the validation because he objected to the revote in the first place, not because of any political allegiances: “I would like to congratulate the winners of the second election. They are great student senators and I have enjoyed working with them on Student Senate.”

“It’s been a roller coaster ride,” said Kling. “I’m happy with the result, but I wish it had happened differently.”

Wiltsee, Pock, and Papasian were unavailable for comment.

Next week, two Senate meetings will be held. First, the senators from this past year will hold a meeting and the newly elected senators will hold a meeting directly afterwards. Their first order of business will be to vote on a new Senate Chair.  

General body senator-elects were also verified by the Student Senate this Thursday. In the first election, graduate students were able to vote for undergraduate representatives, and a reelection was already planned for the Senate seats before the entire server shut down.

Unless one of the winners declines, the following people will represent undergraduates in their colleges next year:

In the SIA, Kristin Sun, Ananya Bubna, Courtney Thompson, and Waylon Lu took the four open spots. For H&SS, Adam Atkinson, Sophia Nagornaya, Matthew Rado, Benjamin Hackett, Andres Bermudez, Kevin Lee, and Nasheena Porter filled the seven available seats. Jonathan Lee, Yew Choe Wong, Nicholas Scocozzo, Abigail Barnes, Michelle Birchak, Thomas Sabram, Samantha Rosenthal, Kirk Higgins, James Rogers, and Nicolette Louissaint were elected as CIT senators. For the four MCS Senate seats, Laura Drogowski, Edward Ryan, Rachel Gougian, and Eleanor Zimmermann were elected. Jonathan Mendelson, Joseph Arasin, Margaret Richards, and Stephanie Rosenthal will be representing SCS next year. In CFA, Jean Lester, Akil Simon, Maureen Burns, Aftyn Giles, Lauren Distefano, Trevor Clark, and Andrew Gehling were chosen for the school’s seven available seats. For the interdepartmental programs, including BHA, BSA, and SHS, Mark Caola and Wei Tang were elected.

All of the official election results can be reviewed at http://elections.andrew.cmu.edu.