Mercedes Burrowes withdraws from Student Association election

The nominations are in. This year’s candidates for the Student Association’s (SA) board of directors includes several members of this year’s board, organized into a new slate called Students With A Dream (SWAD).

They are being challenged by several independent candidates, some of them on smaller slates.

Mercedes Burrowes from SWAD,  who was facing Kizzie St. Clair in the director of equity race, has withdrawn from the election.  Burrowes is entering her final year at George Brown College (GBC) next fall and is looking to put all her energy into her studies.

“I want to give it my all as a student and really absorb all the information.” said Burrowes. “I feel like I’ve served my students well this year and I don’t have any regrets about withdrawing or any regrets about running this year. I do really just want to focus on just being a student once again.”  

Arnel Fleuant (SWAD), the current Black students representative, is taking on Kavi Ramgoolam for the director of education position.  

Several of the SWAD candidates now running together as had run against each other in last year’s elections as part of two different slates, Act Now and Values, Voices, Virtue (V3). The Act Now and V3 slates split the board nearly evenly after the election. 

None of the independent candidates have organized a slate of more than one person, although a few registered as “slate to be determined”, so it remains a possibility that a slate could be organized to run against SWAD. 

According to chief returning officer, Charles Wilson, several of the nomination periods for the various positions were extended until March 5.

Nureisse Khan was acclaimed as the student representative to the GBC board of governors.