The runoff results in the race for undergraduate student body president were announced on Wednesday in the Student Center Commons. Alina Staskevicius, current undergraduate vice president for Administrative Affairs won the position after the extended campaign against Kristie Champlin, current Public Policy representative.
Carlos D’Almeida, SGA undergraduate elections chair, announced the results. Staskevicius won 1,622 votes of the 2,641 cast, (61.4 percent), to Champlin’s 1019 votes. The turnout for the runoff was roughly 77 percent of the original 3,397 voters in the undergraduate elections.
While this does show a marked decrease in voter participation from the initial elections, the turnout in the runoff election was still higher than the turnout in last year’s runoff elections. Last year 2,620 students voted in the runoff elections, 18 more people than had voted in the initial elections that year.
This was the third straight year that the undergraduate presidency went to a runoff after none of the three initial candidates emerged with a majority of the votes in the first round of elections. Staskevicius finished the first round of elections with 42.0 percent of the vote to Champlin’s 29.9 percent. Candidate Robert McEntyre finished with 28.1 percent.
“I don’t really think [winning] has hit me yet. I’m really excited about the upcoming year, but there is a lot to learn,” Staskevicius said.
After transitioning with into current undergraduate president Nick Wellkamp’s position, Staskevicius’s first responsibilities will include appointing her executive cabinet. Applications for executive positions can be found in the SGA office in the Student Center Commons.
“My vision for Georgia Tech is to see us growing together as a community, that is something we will have to make sure is communicated to Dr. Peterson and I think we will work to really get the new administration on board with several issues we have been talking about during the campaign like the new portal,” Staskevicius said when asked about her goals for the summer.
“I’m really happy for Alina, I’ve worked with her over the past couple of years; I definitely want to stay involved in SGA,” Champlin said when asked about her plans for the future.