The final results of the 2016 University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) General Election saw three-fourths of the Momentum slate’s candidates elected to their respective executive positions.
Last year’s election saw the entire One Voice slate elected to the UWSA executive, of which only one member chose to run again.
Kevin Settee, the current UWSA vice-president external affairs, ran uncontested for president, and was elected with 614 votes.
Vice-president external affairs candidate and fellow Momentum slate member Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie was also unopposed, and was elected to her position with 604 votes.
Momentum’s vice-president student affairs candidate Laura Garinger beat out Alexa Potashnik (one of two members of the competing United Voice slate) for the position, garnering 404 votes to Potashnik’s 257.
The only member of Momentum who will not take office next school year is vice-president internal candidate Johnathan Northam, who was narrowly beaten out by United Voice’s other member, David Fanhbulleh. Fanhbulleh received 362 votes, while Northam only received 303.
Adrienne Tessier beat out Julianne Petrasko and Sydney Christie for the position of arts director, walking away with 344 votes to Petrasko and Christie’s 282.
Oladele Ojewole will serve as union’s new environmental ethics director after receiving 381 votes to Avery Letkeman’s 248.
The position of science director was the most hotly contested in the election with Mohamed Abo Aoun, Raphael Hoult, and the team of Meghan Fehr and Lochlan Wilson all running for the position.
Aoun was declared the victor after a recount. He had 247 votes to Fehr and Wilson’s 246 (trailed by Hoult’s 189).
Mohamed Behi (accessibility director), Mitchell van Ineveld (business and economics director), Abigail Pudwill and Andrew Vineberg (community liaisons), Allan Dunkeld (education director), Jacqueline Pelland (LGBT director), Jade DeFehr (status of women director) and Laura Gurbhoo and Hazim Ismail (part-time/mature students directors) all ran unopposed, and all were successfully elected to their respective positions on the UWSA board of directors.
David Wiebe was elected to the U of W senate with 587 votes.
Only 8.2 per cent of the student body voted in this year’s election, a jarring drop from the previous year’s 14 per cent turnout.
