On Wednesday, the two and a half weeks of campaigning closed with the undergraduate student body electing Dillon Roseen as Undergraduate SGA President and Brandie Banner as Executive Vice President. Roseen and Banner came away with 53.6% of the vote and 1,531 votes overall in comparison to 705 votes to Conrad Rybka and Donovan Shuman as well as 620 votes to Alex Bandes and Yvonne Ploder.
After SGA Elections Chair Andrew Block announced the results, supporters cheered and rushed to congratulate the SGA President and Executive Vice President elect. Roseen and Banner took to the front of CULC 144 briefly to thank their supporters as well as their opponents for a great campaign.
“We’re just really thankful for the support that everyone has shown over the past two and a half weeks. And also just the campaign in general from the other tickets has been really awesome, they really focused on the issues. I think we’re just looking forward to getting to work now and implementing, I think someone pointed out, 29 initiatives, so we’re excited to just get to work,” said Roseen.
“Yeah super humbled and thankful and excited to get to work so I think we have a lot to do and appreciate your support so much,” said Banner.
Roseen and Banner focused their campaign on improving the student experience at Tech in various areas including improving student life, campus infrastructure, access to technology and revitalizing SGA. The pair already has some of their initiatives in the works as they prepare to step into their new roles.
Rybka and Shuman, who labeled themselves as a different kind of SGA candidate because neither had been previously involved with SGA, ended up pulling in 24.6% of the vote.
Bandes and Ploder had garnered 650 votes in total but were docked 30 votes and $35 from their budget for violations in four counts of campaigning before the campaign period. The two violations the campaign was found guilty of, which Block described as minor in an email, related to a facebook post and group.
The posting in a private sorority facebook group was considered a straightforward and unanimous violation by the elections committee. The committee estimated there were 160 active Tech students in the sorority group and that at least 50 of these members would be undecided. From those undecided voters it was estimated that 60% of them would be swayed by the post so they docked 30 votes. While the second violation involved Bandes and Ploder knowingly adding people, they had not confirmed to their campaign team to a campaign team facebook group. The elections committee felt that it would serve as an advertisement for the campaign but not significantly impact votes so they docked an amount of 5% of total budget as it did not warrant the full 10% penalty for a minor violation.