The UVSS Elections Office has announced that Encompass UVic won a decisive victory against the other slates, with only a single director-at-large from Woke UVic winning a place on the next year’s UVSS Board of Directors. A fee increase to support University 101 passed with 66.8 per cent in favour, while an increase to the travel pool was defeated with only 36.1 per cent in favour.
Of 17 620 eligible voters, 3 542 (20.1 per cent) voted.
Ben Lukenchuk, the new Director of Outreach and University Relations, is already looking forward to his term in office.
“All slates together managed to get the voter turnout to 20.1 per cent, which again is not ideal but it’s better than we’re usually at,” Lukenchuck said in a comment. “I’m really pleased with the results, and I think it’s going to be a great year.”
Kevin Tupper was voted the new Director of Finance and Operations.
“It really has been just this amazing experience getting out there and listening to students, hearing what they need to see from their UVSS,” Tupper said. “There’s 17 of us and there’s 17 000 students. We’re gonna be there for those 17 000 students and we’re really excited to bring that in our year in office.”
THE RESULTS
Lukenchuk won the Director of Outreach and University Relations position with 1746 out of 3417 ballots, which is more than both Sara Maya Bhandar and Brontë Renwick-Shields’s 865 and 806 votes combined, respectively.
Tupper won the Director of Finance and Operations position with 1820 votes, with Naomi Reuveny (Woke UVic) as the runner-up with 893. Negin Saadati (Unite UVic) received 688.
Maxwell Nicholson won the Director of Campaigns and Community Relations position with 1 658 votes, with Susan Timayo (Woke UVic) finishing in third and incumbent Kenya Rogers (Unite UVic) finishing in second.
The Director of Student Affairs position went to Emma Kinakin with 1 705, with Lucy Hagos (Woke UVic) and Bernadette Peterson (Unite UVic) finishing second and third respectively.
Jordan Quitzau won the Director of Events position with 1 521 votes, with Wilfried Akokpovi (Woke UVic) finishing second and Nathan Butz (Unite UVic) finishing third.
Tianyang Zhang completed the sweep with a win in the Director of International Student Relations position with 152 votes. Dheeraj Alamchandani (Woke UVic) finished second.
Results for the UVic Senate and Board of Governors are still pending, with elections closing at 4 p.m. PST today.
Full results, which are not yet final, are available on the UVSS Elections website.
UPDATE March 4, 2:16 p.m.: Unite UVic has provided a statement to the Martlet:
The students have spoken and we are excited for Michelle and Encompass. We wish them the best of luck and hope they push for the big issues like a sexual assault policy and a summer transit pass on top of sushi and cell phones.
Congratulations to the Encompass team and one of our Director at Large candidates, Michelle Brown, for getting elected. We wish the Encompass team the best of luck on their board term and look forward to seeing the delivery of their platform promises. Furthermore, we encourage the Encompass team to continue to engage with and respond to the wants of all students, including us! We are excited to collaborate where possible, and to continue doing the work we’ve already started 🙂
