Wender elected WSA president with decisive victory

by Anna Talman

Assistant News



In a highly publicized election with record voter turnout, Joey Wender ’03 and Yaw A-Boateng ’05 won the Presidential and Vice-Presidential seats on the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), respectively.

The race was not without its controversy. Impeachment proceedings have begun against Matt Ferrisi ’03, a presidential candidate currently serving on the Community Outreach Committee of the WSA, who is accused of distributing alcoholic beverages in return for votes.

When the polls closed Friday night at 11:59, over half of the eligible student

body, 1469 individuals, had logged a vote. Former WSA Elections had been plagued with voter apathy. Only 39 percent of the voting public voted in last year’s Presidential election. Elections in years past yielded even lower turnouts, and even reschedulings of elections, as in 1999, because of a lack of student interest.

“It’s incredible. In America today, it’s absolutely amazing to get over half of the voting populace to actually vote,” said Wender, who has served on the WSA for three years.

Both Wender and current WSA President Matt Fox ’03 attributed this marked rise in voter turnout to improvements within the WSA and a mounting sentiment that the WSA is both interested in student affairs and capable of doing something to improve student life on campus.

“The WSA has gotten its act together,” said Sebastian Kaplan-Sears ’02, a member of the assembly and the treasurer of the Student Budget Committee.

President-elect Wender received 641 votes—43.6 percent—beating his closest opponent, Camille Zahniser ’04 by a margin of 264 votes. Zahniser garnered 377 votes, while candidates Matt Ferrisi ’03 and Ben Flynn ’03 won 305 and 63 votes, respectively.

A-Boateng’s margin was smaller, yet still significant. He won 36.3 percent of the vote, with 534 votes.

Another significant ballot measure, to raise the College Body Tax, was also

approved. Seventy-six percent of voters (1121 individuals) voted to raise this tax, which funds student groups via the Student Budget Committee (SBC), by ten dollars a semester.

According to Kaplan-Sears, current Chair of the SBC, this increase will add

approximately $50,000 to the SBC budget yearly.

This year, the total initial budget requests for student groups were $472,086. The SBC allocated $217,181, Kaplan-Sears said.

A similar initiative to raise the College Body Tax failed in 2001, when a majority, but not the required two-thirds majority, voted yes.

Both Fox and Kaplan-Sears were satisfied with this result.

“The College Body Tax needed to be increased, and this decision by the students to raise the tax will result in sincere benefits if allocated properly in the future,” Fox said.

“I was just very happy. It reflects that students are more and more active on campus…a good trend,” Kaplan-Sears said.

Wender was enthusiastic about the coming year and his new role on the WSA.

“I’m relieved that it’s over and excited that the student body has decided that they agree with the items that I want to accomplish next year,” Wender said.

Wender said that he and A-Boateng had already spoken about next year’s initiatives.

“Yaw is a great guy, … and we’re really excited about working together next year to accomplish an agenda. We share a lot of priorities,” he said.

“I feel it is a victory for the entire student body...and everyone can expect no regrets...Joey and I will say less, and do more,” A-Boateng said.

Central to the agenda next year, according to Wender, will be improving food quality, enhancing social life and solving student space problems.

This election was highly visible, with all four Presidential candidates and a number of Vice-Presidential and representative candidates advertising their platforms via posters spread throughout campus and mass emails.

Fox thought that Wender’s campaigning had been an asset.

“Joey had an extremely aggressive campaign based on advertising and name recognition overload. Flyers and other methods, like email, were very successful for him in this campaign,” Fox said.

Wender acknowledged the overload of campaign material he had disseminated.

“I’ve postered ad infinitum this week,” he said last week at an Argus-sponsored debate.

Students of the Classes of 2003, 2004, and 2005 also voted to choose five WSA representatives per class to serve in the coming year.

Sixteen students ran in a tight race for the posts as Sophomore Class Representative. Elected were: Emily Polak (with the most votes—186), Adam Poswolsky, Ali Gomer, Thang Duy Le Ngoc and Karen Courtheoux.

All five candidates who ran were elected as Junior Class Representatives to the 37-member WSA. They are: Melinda Coro, Maris Yanow, Selina Ellis, Ben Block and Anna Borrelli.

Meanwhile, only four students ran for five available positions as Senior Class Representative. All four were elected, despite a minor glitch in the system.Colleen Galbraith, George Briggs, Matt Lerner and Adam Lachman were elected as representatives. Write-in candidate Liz King finished in fifth place, with three votes, but was not officially elected, as the WSA requires 10 votes for a write-in candidate to be elected. The WSA will instead hold appointment interviews to fill the vacant spot.

According to Fox, there was a glitch with the computer software used in the elections that caused erroneous results to be shown online after the election. According to the website 64 people voted for “not Colleen Galbraith” as a write-in option for senior class representative. Fox explained that this was a problem with the HTML script of the voting system. If a voter submitted as a write-in option the name of a candidate already on the ballot, the automated tally would begin recording future votes for that candidate (already listed on the ballot) under the write-in blank. Therefore, the 64 votes tallied for “not Colleen Galbraith” were a fluke, Fox said. 63 of those votes were intended to go to Galbraith but were mis-tallied by the system.

“Colleen Galbraith, similar to Elaine Ho two years ago, most likely only received one vote with the word ‘not,’ and then it tripped the tally,” Fox said.

Fox also elaborated on another glitch in the proceedings.

“I entered the dates wrong,” he said.

Fox set the opening and closing dates for the election electronically, and mistakenly set the election to close Thursday night at 11:59 rather than Friday night, as the WSA had indicated. Voting was stopped for a brief period early Friday morning, and election “results” were visible to the public for that brief period of time. Fox indicated that it was a mistake and was rectified as quickly as possible.




 
 
 
 
 
 
The Wesleyan Argus
© 2001 Wesleyan University
Questions/Comments: Min Ter Lim, Online Editor
or the Argus