By Preeteesh Peetabh Singh
Dialog Reporter
The 2012 Student Association (SA) byelection results are out.
Mohammad Ali Aumeer, the current director of Education and Equity is elected as Board of Governors Representative with 857 votes in favour. Aumeer believes that the key issues facing students today are high tuition fees, low per-student provincial funding and lack of student grant.
Mary Joseph with 154 votes is elected as Community Services and ECE Representative, and Raymond Chiao with 219 votes is the new Health Sciences Representative.
Natasha Mehan is re-elected as Waterfront Campus Director for another term with 277 votes in favour. “When I was appointed into office this summer, I set out to do three things: ensure students know their rights and responsibilities as 70 per cent of academic appeals come from health science students, increase student participation as many of the students at Waterfront are extremely busy, and lastly, ensure that the Waterfront campus has as many services as possible. I intend to keep working on these goals until the end of my term”, said Mehan. “Tasks that are currently underway are, more microwaves, a music player for the SA student lounge, and possibly a fitness trainer to hold classes at Waterfront from January.”
The position of Construction and Engineering Technologies Representative saw tough competition among the candidates. The tightly contested election was won by Thomas Hadwen with 173 votes while Johanna Gronberg got 150, losing by a narrow margin of 23 votes. Michael Dawson managed 75 votes.
The constituency byelections winners are Coty Zachariah (Aboriginal Constituency Representative), Roan Rowe (ASL Constituency Representative), Nikhil Gulati (International Students Constituency Representative), Kyle Rodgers (LGBTQ Constituency Representative) and Jennifer Saliba (Women and Trans People Constituency Representative).
Most of the winners remained unavailable for comment since the results had not been ratified at the time this article went to print.
Chief Returning Officer Amber Hiles, who was responsible for the elections ranging from the administration of the voting stations to the ruling of election matters and ballot counting, presented her report to the board on Dec. 5 and the results were ratified.
