Act Now takes four out of five executive seats, but the Student Association board overall is a split with V3
Updated Tuesday, April 11 at 4:55 p.m. with results of the recount for the international students representative race.
After the votes were counted on election night, the Student Association (SA) board will be split almost evenly between Act Now and Values, Voices, Virtue (V3) slate supporters when their terms start on May 1.
The SA funds The Dialog.
Act Now took four out of five executive positions, with Mercedes Burrowes from V3 taking director of campus life by more than 200 votes over Act Now’s Brittney DaCosta.
In total, 10 candidates who supported the Act Now slate and nine candidates who supported the V3 slate were either elected or acclaimed.
While the board is divided between the two slates, now that the election is over, the focus will be on finding common ground: what’s best for students.
“I’m not denying that the slate culture is there and we have different points, but at the end of the day our agenda is to help the students and take a leadership role on that,” said Riddhi Modi, who was re-elected as the director of communications and internal.
For Burrowes, working cohesively with her fellow board members means moving beyond the slates going forward.
“At this point our slates are done with and now we’re one team, and we need to work as a team to treat the students and give them the best year we can,” she said. “It won’t work if we’re all on different pages.”
In a statement to The Dialog, DaCosta congratulated the incoming board of directors and told them to make George Brown College students proud.
Both slates also had instances of their posters falling or potentially being torn down during the campaign.
White said that as a Waterfront campus student, she was concerned that losing posters would make it harder for her to be recognized at St. James, and that she was relieved when she learned that she won over V3 candidate Mitchell Toye.
Following the election, White said that bringing the entire board together to discuss their expectations for each other will be important toward making the board cohesive.
“Tensions can get really high when you start competing for something, so it’s just giving everybody the space to voice their concerns and voice their frustrations and everything is beneficial.”
The closest race is the race for international students representative, which is currently separated by just seven votes.
The results also show a massive increase in the number of votes for constituency representatives who this year were included on the same ballot as other positions and students did not need to self-identify in order to vote for those candidates.
The St. James campus director and international students representative results will go to an automatic recount this week as the margin of victory was less than five per cent. In the St. James campus director race the margin for Francess Torres (Act Now) was 2.64 per cent and Kushagra Manchanda (V3) won by less than one per cent of the vote.
In total 1362 ballots were cast in the election for an overall voter turnout of 6.54 per cent, almost exactly the same as in 2016 which had a turnout of 6.53 per cent.
Three positions, health sciences, construction and engineering and Waterfront campus director, are vacant and will be open for students to run for in a byelection that will be held in the fall of 2017.
Director of Communications and Internal
RIDDHI MODI (Act Now!): 603 – Elected by 126 votes
HARJIT SINGH DUA (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 477
Director of Campus Life
MERCEDES BURROWES (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 612 – Elected by 211 votes
BRITTNEY DACOSTA (Act Now!): 401
Director of Education
MITCHELL TOYE (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 433
TIFFANY WHITE (Act Now!): 545 – Elected by 112 votes
Director of Equity
SHELDON MORTIMORE (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 517
ALEX STEWART (Act Now!): 582 – Elected by 65 votes
St. James Campus Director
CALVIN BARTHOLOMEW SOTO (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 313
FRANCIS TORRES (Act Now!): 330 – Elected by 17 votes.
NOTE: Will go to an automatic recount as there is only a 2.64 per cent margin of victory
Community Services Representative
TISHA GRAHAM (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 73 – Elected by 39 votes
ANDREW MURRELL (Act Now!): 34
Accessibility Representative
YUSEPH JACKMAN (Act Now!): 418- Elected by 139 votes
CHARLIE TOOKALAK (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 279
Black Students Representative
ZHORRAH GRANT (Act Now!): 264
SABRINA MOHAMMED (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 369 – Elected by 105 votes
International Students’ Representative
Updated April 11 at 4:55 p.m. with numbers after recounts.
KUSHAGRA MANCHANDA (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue): 371 – Elected by 13 votes
AMAN SHETH (Act Now!): 358
Rejected ballots: 13
Unmarked ballots: 624
Acclaimed Candidates
Director of Operations
Gemeda “Gem” Beker (Act Now!)
Casa Loma Campus Director
Jasmyn St. Hilaire (Act Now!)
Satellite Campus Director
Ashley Cammisa (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue)
Art and Design Representative
Alejandro (Alex) Prieto (Supported Act Now!)
Business Representative
Ron Greenberg (Supported V3: Values| Voices| Virtue)
Hospitality and Culinary Arts Representative
Chioma Adaeze Ogbonna (Act Now!)
Liberal Arts and Preparatory Studies Representative
Vanessa Truong (Supported Act Now!)
First Nations, Metis and Inuit Students Representative
Leslie VanEvery (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue)
LGBTQ Representative
Garth Vernon (V3: Values| Voices| Virtue)
Women and Trans People Representative
Tiah Mercedes Arlene Beckles (V3: Voices, Values, Virtue)
Vacant Positions
Waterfront Campus Director
Construction & Engineering Representative
Health Sciences Representative
Source: Chief returning officer for the Student Association election.
