The team calling itself the Progress ticket took all six executive positions on next year’s Students’ Administrative Council on Friday night when the results of the three-day vote were announced.
“I’m very excited at our win,” said Paul Bretscher, who won the position of SAC president with 42 per cent of the vote.
During the announcement of the winners on Friday night in the Hart House Debates room, a large contingent of Progress supporters sitting in the audience cheered loudly for each of their victorious candidates. Along with Bretscher, Monique Ferdinand will become VP Operations, Estefania Toledo will become VP University Affairs, Jennifer Hassum will become VP External, Shaila Kibria will become VP Equity Issues, and Walied Khogali will become VP UTM. Each candidate won his or her field with at least 35 per cent of the vote, and Khogali won the UTM position by more than 80 per cent. Overall voter turnout sat at around 15 per cent.
The results presented on March 4 were not the official or final results. Several complaints of campaign violations are still being decided by the election’s Chief Returning Officer, Scott Tremblay, and appeals of past decisions are also proceeding. Tremblay said on Friday that the results of the election would not be made final for a further ten days.
“It’s been a very hard and trying campaign,” Bretscher told The Varsity after the results were announced. “I’m thankful to all the volunteers who have come out and helped us, the people who have skipped classes for the past week-I look forward to starting our term and working on our contract with students.”
New VP External Jen Hassum agreed that it had been a tough campaign. Thirty candidates were running in the election for a total of six spots, up sharply from last year.
“Of course I’m happy,” said Hassum on Friday, adding, “and quite frankly, I’m surprised. Leafleting today, it was so difficult to get a feel on how people were voting, because there were so many slates.” Hassum said that the students she talked to seemed exhausted with the whole election. “They didn’t want to hear us talking to them any more, so because of the ‘get away from me’ vibe from students, I thought, ‘Oh, they’re not on our side.'”
Current SAC president Ranjini (Rini) Ghosh agreed that the campaign this year had been a much tougher fight than the year she was elected.
“I think it was a really difficult election to run in comparison to ours,” she said, “because in our year we had two people running for every position and the most we had was three candidates running for president.”
Ghosh said she “couldn’t be particularly one-sided toward any one candidate,” but that she felt that “a good team won. I think they’ll do a good job next year, and the things that we’ve started, I think I can trust that Paul’s going to carry them forward.”
“The students have spoken,” said Dylan Rae, an unsuccessful presidential candidate this year and the outgoing VP of Student Life. “The students are never wrong. This is my third year on SAC and I’m very proud of all the success I’ve had in the past. Obviously I’m disappointed that I didn’t win, but I think we raised a lot of issues during the campaign that I’m hoping next year’s board will take care of.” Rae said that he will be graduating and going to teachers’ college next year.
The fact that a single ticket won the entire slate of positions had some speculating whether it would lead to less infighting on SAC, something which the fractious organization has been known for in recent years.
“I think the campaign is a terrific way to bond for an incoming executive,” said Bretscher. “It’s wonderful that we’re all elected together. We’ve become much better friends over the course of this election and we’ve gone to the wall for each other. I think these bonds are going to last, and I think you’ll see a SAC that is united next year, and a SAC that will proactively work for the students, instead of internal fighting and bickering.”
Bretscher said that the first order of business upon taking office will be pursuing his promise of 24-hour access to U of T’s ROSI academic website. He also said that he will be actively involved in the upcoming elections for the SAC board of directors, which will take place the week of March 19-24.
