The General Elections 2022 of the Student Association of George Brown College (SAGBC) concluded on April 8 with both of the top two incumbent executive directors winning a new term in office.
GBC students elected a total of four executive directors and six student representatives on the board, of which several are new faces. The SAGBC funds the Dialog.
Incumbent Sri Krishna Rajan won the two-way race for Director of Communications and Internal, one of the top two executive positions at SAGBC, by beating his challenger Anupreet Kaur by a margin of 424 votes.
Krishna led his election campaign with a commitment that if elected, he would work on initiating communications with the college on creating more co-op opportunities for students.
Krishna also set advocacy for UN Sustainable Development Goals as one of his priorities in office.
According to the election results validated by Chief Returning Officer Charles Wilson, Krishna received a total of 760 votes, whereas, 336 GBC students cast their votes for first-time candidate Kaur.
A total of 1337 students voted for this position, of which 241 ballots were left blank in the polls and hence were rejected.
Incumbent Dhwani Bhalavat, Director of Operations, which is another top executive position on the board, won another term in office without any candidates contesting for the position.
The polls included the provision for Yes or No votes for positions with single candidates.
A total of 987 students voted Yes to Bhalavat for the position, whereas, 83 students voted No.
One of the main priorities set by Bhalavat during the campaign period for her new term is working on making more students aware about the services that SA provides.
The two-way contest for Director of Education and Equity was won by first-year denturism student Anjie Nijmeh, who beat Dipti Deepak Sharma by 172 votes.
Nijmeh and Sharma carried a total of 663 and 491 votes respectively.
Nijmeh wants to work on fighting high tuition fees, encouraging teachers to record and add captions to all online classes and facilitating more on-campus events for students.
The position of Director of Student Experience was one of the most heavily contested in the elections with five new faces who competed for the role.
International student Simran Malhotra secured this position with 328 votes, beating her nearest opponent Amrita Sharma who finished the race with 251 votes.
Three other candidates for this position Jaseera Shajahan, Rashmi Rupani and Harrizen Thirunavukarasu carried 246, 205 and 104 votes respectively.
The two-way race for the student representative for the Arts, Design, and Information Technology Center was won by Mehek Khanna with 166 votes.
Hanyi Yang, the other candidate for this position finished with 97 votes. A total of 322 students of this respective center cast their ballots for this role, of which 59 ballots were left blank.
The race for the Business Center Representative was another two-horse race. Arlinda Sokoli with 193 votes, beat Mohammad Arafat Rahman, who finished with 90 votes.
A total of 313 students enrolled in programs of the business center voted to decide this position.
Luke Bowden, who was the sole candidate running for the representative position for Community Services and Early Childhood Center, secured the position with 107 votes in his favour and 8 votes against.
In another race, Nirmala Singh beat Merve Erenler by a narrow 25-vote margin to become the new representative for Health Educational Center.
Out of a total of 162 cast votes, Singh and Erenler received 90 and 65 votes respectively.
Shriya Gupte, who was the only candidate for the Representative for Health Sciences Center secured the position in the election.
Gupte received 149 votes in favour, whereas, 16 students opposed with No votes.
In another contest, Ashmit Kaur won the race for Hospitality and Culinary Arts Representative by finishing ahead of three other candidates.
Kaur secured 71 votes out of the total 174 votes cast for this position.
Nihal Mujeeb finished in second position with 33 votes.
