After a month-long campaign, U of T’s Governing Council has a new slate of student governors. Results from this year’s Governing Council elections were released last Tuesday, with six newcomers and two incumbents elected to represent the university’s students on its highest decision-making body.
Ben Coleman and Nabil Arif were elected in the highly comtested Category I, representing full-time Arts & Science undergraduates. Arif, a student at the UTM, ran far ahead of the pack with 1057 votes, easily winning first spot. Coleman, of New College, had a tougher time; his 641 votes put him only 87 votes ahead of UTSC’s Kevin Rampage, who finished third. Kriti Bhatt of Trinity College was in fourth place with 370 votes, while the remaining 10 candidates each got fewer than 200 votes.
Arif and Coleman both currently serve on the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) board of directors. Arif currently represents UTM, while Coleman serves as an at-large Arts & Science director.
In Category II, representing full-time undergraduates from the professional faculties, Andrew Girgis and Padraigin Murphy were elected from a field of seven candidates. Girgis, a two-term incumbent governor from the Faculty of Pharmacy, was re-elected with 195 votes. Murphy, of U of T’s law school, garnered 137 votes. Murphy said she looks forward to addressing several challenges her faculty faces: “There is a great deal of interest at the law school right now in administration and governance.” Engineering’s Anastasia Aksnis was third with 102 votes.
The race for the part-time undergraduate category saw Susan Froom and Susan Murray emerge victorious from a pool of four candidates. Trinity College’s Froom led the field with 85 votes. Murray, who studies part-time at Woodsworth College and currently sits on the Woodsworth College Council, finished second with 72 votes. She made clear that the concerns of mature students will be a focus of her time on Governing Council, citing concerns held by mature students such as raising children while attending school.
The graduate students’ Constituency I, which represents students in the social sciences, saw a two-person race. Caitlin Campisi of OISE defeated Michael Dick of the Faculty of Information, 174 votes to 58 votes.
The single seat in Constituency II, which represents graduate students in the physical and life sciences, was considerably more contested. Alexandra Harris, an incumbent governor from the Faculty of Nursing, won with 135 votes — 28 votes ahead of Dan Weaver in the Faculty of Physics. Harris cited the experience of international students as being particularly important to her, saying that “ensuring that international students are well-supported (financially and otherwise) and having the opportunity to engage in university governance has, and will continue to be, one of my top priorities.”
