Last night, the current Student Assembly announced the election results for the 2007-2008 Student Assembly. Several incumbent students were reelected, while four of the positions including the position designated for a representative from the College of Human Ecology, had no candidates.Only the undesignated positions and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences representative races were contested.
In the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Adam Gay ’08 was reelected, while Steven Matthews ’10 will replace outgoing representative Ehrlic Madeleine ’09.
Daniel Budish ’09 was reelected as the representative for the College of
Art, Architecture, and Planning and Vince Hartman ‘08, Christopher Basil ’10 and Austin Redmon ’10 are the newly elected representatives in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Christopher Sarra ’09 and Ian Lesyk ’09 were elected as representatives for the College of Engineering, replacing Grace Leonard ’09 and Neal Nisargand ’07.
Both C.J. Slicklen ’09 and Ryan Lavin ’09 were reelected to their positions in the School of Hotel Management and the College of Industrial and Labor Relations, respectively.
As the International Liaison At-Large, current liaison Ahmed Salem ’08 will be followed by the newly elected Mazdak Asgary ’08.
The LGBTQ Liaison At-Large next semester is Ashley McGovern ’08, who will replace Calvin Selth ’07. Arjun Natarajan ’09 and Rammy Salem ’10 were elected the Minority Liaisons At-Large.
Jules Marwell ’08 and Tanya Lee ’09 were elected to represent the University Assembly.
Ahmed Salem ’08, Carly Miller ’10 and Elan Greenberg ’08 were elected Undesignated At-Large representatives.
Several elected SA members expressed concerns over a lack of interest in the election process.
“I think we need to review our election policy because we had so many people elected by default; we had so many uncontested races,” said Mark Coombs ’08, elected as an undesignated At-large representative and who is also a Sun Columnist.
Vince Hartman ’08 agreed.
“Nobody really knew what was going on and that’s why we had such a low turnout for the elections,” Hartman said.
Although many candidates ran unopposed, several offered their ideas for improving Cornell as well as the SA.
“Dining issues are at the top of my list,” said Coombs. “I want to make sure the issues the S.A. looks at are student focused issues,” he added.
Vince Hartman, who organized the Syracuse Airport bus service, said, “I wanted to be on the S.A. because I want to continue the Syracuse to Cornell bus program, and ensure that it goes through all the breaks and make it a bigger program. Also, I want to help change the SAFC, and make people submit honest budgets.”
Other candidates called for S.A. election reform.
Austin Redmon ’10, elected to represent the College of Arts and Sciences, said “In general, I want to se the S.A. become more open and public, We need to do a better job at reaching at to our constituency,” said.
The current assembly will be in session until June 1 of this year and the newly elected members will officially take over at the beginning of the next academic year.
Correction appended: “New S.A. Reps Announced” states C.J. Slicklen ’09 was reelected as the S.A. representative from the School of Hotel Management. He is the representative from the School of Hotel Administration. The Sun regrets this error.