Women’s Rights Officer: Gabrielle Stewart
Education Officer: Paul Danger Brown
It was a very, very tight race between all of the candidates.
Voting stats:
WRO Candidates:
Georgina Dickson 282
Gabrielle Stewart 319
Stephenie Williams 183
EO Candidates:
Paul Danger Brown 397
Stephanie Stuteley 387
784 students voted – a huge number by VUWSA standards.
In last March’s by-election, 345 students voted – one-sixtieth of the University population- and 1042 votes were cast in last October’s general election.
Campaigning was minimal this time around – I didn’t see any posters for any of the candidates, and one person running for election commented that if their opposition weren’t campaigning then they had no reason to.
Returning Officer Pippa Strom can be credited with a lot of the voter turnout success, after she put in a huge advertising effort for the election, including heaps of info in Salient and coloured posters around the University featuring Cliff Curtis and a pie (amongst other things) reminding students to vote.
After many issues with online voting last year, the new, easy-to-use online voting system, which took me less than 20 seconds to cast a vote, also appears to have been a winner with students.
And despite Salient being on a five-week publication holiday, I had a dream two nights ago about the by-election. I dreamt that a Salient volunteer ran for President – and won (despite the President’s position not being available in this election). It was a really weird dream, and it reflects that I have well and truly become a VUWSA nerd.
Anyway, congratulations to the new WRO and Education Officer. Their predecessors were wacky and not incredibly effective, particularly at working with other exec members or serving students, so it will be interesting to see what changes take place this time around.