A small crowd of students gathered in the front of Memorial Union Friday afternoon as the ASUCD election results were announced.
A total of 3,770 students voted in the fall 2009 elections, resulting in the election of six ASUCD senators out of 15 candidates.
The winners, in order of the most first-place votes include Don Ho, Andre Lee, Joel Juarez, Levi Menovske, Abrham Castillo-Ruiz and Bree Rombi.
“I worked so hard,” said Rombi, a sophomore communications and Spanish major. “I was out until midnight last night at the ARC trying to talk to people … I’m just so glad that it all paid off.”
The announcement of Juarez’s election elicited some of the loudest cheers from the crowd.
“I’m so excited, I want to hug everyone,” Juarez said. “It was really a community effort, I couldn’t have done it without all of the help of everyone here with me today.”
Juarez said he is looking forward to representing all communities on campus.
“I really want to create a better connection between the student body and the senate table,” he said.
Ho, Lee and Rombi, ran as members of LEAD. Juarez and Castillo-Ruiz ran together as JAM, which they created with candidate Marisol Ornelas. Menovske ran as an independent candidate.
An ASUCD political slate means that a group of candidates are running together and pooling their resources to campaign, said ASUCD elections chair Nick Sidney.
“There are no ‘official’ ASUCD political slates,” Sidney said. “Any group of candidates that decides to run together can create their own slate.”
Independent candidate Logan Taylor said he chose to run as an independent due to his belief that all candidates should have equal access to resources when reaching out to the student body.
“[LEAD] is pretty much just a red shirt club,” he said prior to the announcement of the results. “Parties just don’t have a place in student politics.”
Independent candidate Christopher Adams said he was not surprised by the election results.
“I am a brand new transfer student, so I wasn’t expecting to do well,” he said. “I gave it my best shot…I am looking to join one of the commissions as I still want to remain a part of ASUCD and put my skills to good use.”
Taylor said he will also remain involved in advocating for students.
“Anybody can approach the senate table with ideas and legislation,” he said. “Everyone should be involved in the process, not just the senators.”
Students interested in writing spending bills and resolutions can attend a legislation-writing clinic hosted by the internal affairs commission today at 5:10 p.m. in the MU Garrison Room.
“Usually senators are the only students writing legislation,” said Amy Hartstein, ASUCD internal affairs commission chair. “We would really like to see more of a turnout from people that aren’t part of ASUCD.”
ERICA LEE can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
