Next year’s make-up of the Students’ Administrative Council (SAC) has been decided after a hard-fought election that saw many prominent SAC directors lose their seats.
Voting took place on ROSI, the online registration Web site. Almost 14 per cent of eligible full-time undergraduates cast a ballot. Chief returning officer John Hoskins announced the results last Friday in the Junior Common Room at University College.
Ashley Morton, a fifth-year engineering student, won the SAC presidency with 1,612 votes—more than 350 votes ahead of his closest rival, UC student Paul Bretscher.
“I want to meet with the executive [and] talk about their future goals and ideas,” Morton said outside a subdued victory party at Suds, the engineering pub in the Sanford Fleming building. “I don’t want to be divided from the board. I don’t want to be fighting against the board,” he added.
After the vote, Paul Bretscher huddled with his supporters to discuss appealing the election results. “I personally haven’t appealed, but there are two very serious complaints still pending that are going to the elections committee,” he said. Bretscher said the complaints concerned what he termed an illegal polling station outside the Salterrae offices at Trinity College, and a full-page advertisement in The Varsity that Bretscher’s ticket had booked for the week of the election, but was cancelled by the newspaper.
“The election committee has considered some new information” about the Varsity ad, Bretscher said, adding that his concern was “to make sure that no voters are disenfranchised by the election.”
Bretscher noted, “there has been a precedent set for disqualifying candidates who have used illegal polling stations, up at UTM.”
But the man who set up the polling station said it was legal: “Salterrae gave free ad space to every candidate from Trinity…. We didn’t pick sides or endorse candidates. But we did set up a polling station outside Strachan Hall to encourage students to vote,” Peter Josselyn said.
The race for vice-president operations was between the current holder of the office, John Lea, and SAC’s external commissioner, Alexandra Artful-Dodger. Lea won handily, with 2,562 votes to Artful-Dodger’s 1,817. At an election debate, Artful-Dodger attacked Lea over a SAC party held at the Guvernment nightclub. Claiming the event had not been properly promoted, Artful-Dodger said, “I’ve always been accountable to the Board of Directors”—a jab at Lea’s role in organizing the event. After the results were in, Lea said the vote was Artful-Dodger’s to lose: “The more she said, the better.” Lea thought his tenure in the job, combined with support from current SAC president Rocco Kusi-Achampong also helped. “We’ve got experience…. Rocco did a very good job.”
In the race for vice-president university affairs, Howard Tam won with 1,489 votes, defeating three competitors. Julia Munk captured the equity vice-presidency, garnering 2,354 votes. Jason Young will occupy the VP student life office, beating three other candidates. Mohammed Hashim will have a unique role at SAC, after winning the Mississauga campus vice-presidency—on the same day, he won a seat on U of T’s Governing Council. Upon hearing of his second win of the day, Hashim jumped up from his seat and struck a Nixon-esque victory pose. Ryan Demello was acclaimed for the position of vice-president representing the Scarborough campus.
In a surprising upset, three students who had played important roles on the SAC board of directors in years past lost their seats. Liz Majic, a former equity commissioner from Victoria College, this year’s external commissioner, Alexandra Artful-Dodger, and former SAC president and UC director Alex Kerner lost their seats. Some of the assembled students chanted “Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye” after hearing of the losses.
Photograph by Simon Turnbull
