By Michele Richinick
Despite a rocky election process, Rob Ranley pulled through to win the Student Government Association (SGA) presidential election.
Elections drew votes from 20.84 percent of the student body, narrowly surpassing the minimum 20 percent required.
Regardless of censuring by the Rules Committee, a ruling and overturning of the sanctions and the election lacking in the minimum student votes needed last week, Ranley beat his opponent, Dan Kamyck.
The results of the election were 61 percent for Ranley, 28 percent for Kamyck and 11 percent no confidence. More than 3,000 students voted.
Ranley said the election was difficult because many issues arose that weren’t addressed in the Direct Elections Manual or anticipated during the election. The manual enumerates the rules and procedures for the directly elected officials of SGA, according to SGA’s website.
“The elections were very long and very exhausting, but in the end it was definitely worth it,” Ranley said.
Ranley, who will begin his post in July, said he was glad SGA members chose to extend the election because it allowed more students to vote.
Students have a lot of great ideas, but many of them don’t know SGA is available to listen to them, Ranley said.
“The best part of [campaigning] was going door-to-door and seeing students face-to-face,” Ranley said.
In order to make SGA more apparent on campus, he said he will work to fix the biggest internal issue within SGA: restructuring.
“I’ll work at recruiting more [students] and doing more training for members when they first come in,” he said. “I also want to expand the responsibilities of senators so they can have more involvement, which will give us more ability to address issues more in depth.”
He said he wants to fix external issues by having a meeting with all student group presidents by the end of April to collaborate and share ideas. He said he will also work with each SGA vice president to see what they can do in each area of the organization.
The elections met the minimum voting threshold, which is 20 percent of the student body. Kamyck said meeting the threshold was the success in the election.
“This was the second year of having the student body choose their president, and it shows we are ready for a third, fourth, fifth year,” he said. “It shows we can handle letting the student body choose their president.”
In order to reach the required voting minimum last week, SGA created cards reminding students to vote, and dispersed them in more than 20 locations on campus, said Ashley Benjamin, SGA vice president for administration and public relations. They also wrote on chalkboards and whiteboards in classrooms to urge students to vote, she said.
Last year’s election had more student votes, partly because it was the first year students could vote for SGA president, Benjamin said. The results of last year’s election were 46.76 percent for current president Joey Fiore, 46.05 percent for his opponent Chris Bourne and 7.19 percent no confidence. More than 4,000 students voted last year.
“[Last year] people were really excited, so I think that certainly helped,” Benjamin said. “I think too that because we had essentially one person running for a certain period of time the excitement wasn’t there as much.
