Unofficial SG elections results announced
Kathryn Edmunds is the new 2015 student body president, replacing Michael Cepeda. Mohammed F Emran | Web Editor
February 26, 2015
After a series of controversies including candidates dropping out, being disqualified and candidates running unopposed, the winners have been unofficially announced by the student government elections chair.
Running unopposed, Kathryn Edmunds and Casey Martin are your new president and vice president, respectively. Chris Ferreira is the new Boca Raton campus governor.
“Obviously I’m happy with the results, I won so, there’s nothing to be sad about,” said Ferreira.
Ferreira, who dropped out of the presidential race, pulled in 461 votes. He bested Onur Basman, who fell short with a total of 134 votes. 47 students voted no response.
Martin wanted to see at least 15 percent voter turnout and planned on using his and Edmunds time campaigning to promote and encourage students to vote for this year’s election.
“I was a little disappointed that the president and vice presidential tickets didn’t do so much campaigning,” Ferreira said. “I had a conversation with the candidate for vice president and he… said he was going to try and get 20 percent voter turnout, but once it seemed that they were running unopposed, they didn’t care.”
Only 878 students voted for the presidential candidate, and 642 for the governor candidates. About 2.8 percent of the student body voted for the president and vice president ticket, and about 2.1 percent that voted for the governor ticket.
This is lower than last years turnout by about six percent.
Be sure to keep up with upressonline.com for more information.
Boca Owl • Feb 26, 2015 at 6:39 pm
The student turnout is poor because by and large the results don’t matter as long as a warm body is in the office pulling the levers so the machine can keep chugging along until next year. The people who vote are those who are either friends of the candidates or have a vested interest in the outcome as it relates to their student organization.
Think about it: at the highest level, the SG President sits on the FAU BOT and
technically has a vote, but it’s more of a courtesy invite because even
when the SG President adamantly fights against things that actually truly affect
students – like perpetual unfair housing rate increases – the BOT approves of them
anyway.
So even though most students seem content to use their SG position to pad their resume, FAU is sometimes lucky enough to draw in some people who are innovative, hard-working and get good projects off the ground. The Glades Road banners, the Rat’s Mouth, the Atlantic Trolley, the Rec Center were all good projects. SG can do a lot more than replace microwaves and extend library hours, even if the BOT doesn’t see eye-to-eye with student needs. SG just needs to think big.