The Union’s annual elections concluded this month, culminating in the election of a brand-new sabbatical team for 2022-23. Across elections week, a total of 1,075 individual members voted in more than 50 elections. It’s fantastic to see so many of our members engaging in the Union’s democratic processes.
In our Student Trustee election, Amy Pile and Peter Ashiagbor were installed for the next academic year. Amy and Peter will be responsible for overseeing the governance of the organisation, its finances and its people. Making sure we are in the best possible place to serve our members. Connor Ward was elected as Fairtrade Ambassador.
There were two places available in our RAG Ambassador election and after the vote Tegan Arnott and Maya Jones narrowly beat Tim Cunningham to the vacancies.
In the Executive Officer elections 11 candidates stood for 5 positions. The winners were as follows:
LGBT+ Students’ Officer – Clare Sessions
Mature Students’ Officer – Hamood Jaffery and
Postgraduate Students’ Officer – Nikky Sabu.
In the BAME Students’ Officer election Hammood Jaffery stood again and beat Tobechukwu Chukwuemeka by just 4 votes.
In a hugely contested International Students’ Officer election Sruthi Kurumozhiyil Subhash beat off 5 other contenders to take up the final place on the Executive Committee.
In the sabbatical elections, the results were as follows:
Vice President Student Involvement:
Amy Sorrell: 223
Jess Bradbury: 430
RON: 31
Jess Bradbury becomes the Vice President Student Involvement for 2022-23.
Vice President Education & Welfare
There were 723 votes cast in this election and in the first round of voting no candidate reached the quota of 305. The results at that point stood as follows:
Brandon Tester: 290
Emily Crawshaw: 191
Danielle Hawkins: 234
RON: 8
Emily Crawshaw and RON were eliminated at this stage and in the second round the votes stood as follows:
Danielle Hawkins: 276
Brandon Tester: 333
At which point Brandon Tester was elected Vice President Education & Welfare.
President:
In the Presidential elections there were 3 rounds of voting. In the first round the votes were as follows:
Charlotte Leighton-Woods: 243
Kira Carter: 199
Molly Young: 193
Yassin Osman: 51
RON: 17
After Yassin and RON were eliminated, the redistributed votes stood at:
Charlotte Leighton-Woods: 249
Kira Carter: 210
Molly Young: 214
With Kira eliminated by just 4 votes the final round finished as follows:
Charlotte Leighton-Woods: 283
Molly Young: 259
Charlotte Leighton-Woods was therefore elected President for 2022-23.
We'd like to extend our thanks and congratulations to all candidates. Putting yourself up before your peers is a courageous thing to do and for that, and for your ideas about how we can improve the University and the Students’ Union, each and every one of you deserves our admiration and a huge round of applause. We look forward to everything that this new group of student leaders will achieve next academic year.
Elections week also saw us run a referendum on a small number of constitutional changes that would make it possible to elect a fourth sabbatical officer to be based at Uxbridge. The motion received near unanimous support. However, to pass it had to meet a high threshold; 5% of the student body needed to vote in the election, including those studying at partner institutions. A total of 916 students.
Unfortunately, we fell agonisingly shy of that with 766 students (4% of the membership) casting a vote. Despite that, those who voted demonstrated overwhelming support for a new officer with 703 voting Yes and just 17 students voting against the motion (the remainder were spoilt).
The Union’s Board will now discuss what the next steps might be surrounding any expansion of the sabbatical team. Thanks to all those who showed support for the idea.