By Scott Strasser, March 3 2016 —

The winners of of the 2016 Students’ Union election were announced March 3 at the Den after a week and a half of campaigning. Students packed the dance floor to find out who will make up next year’s Students’ Legislative Council.

Co-chief returning officers Dan Medland-Marchen and Nolan Hill took to the stage to reveal the results, which were announced to raucous applause.

With 48 per cent of the vote, Stephan Guscott was elected as next year’s SU president. Nick Boots was the runner-up with 28 per cent of the vote, while Jordan Grant finished last with 24 per cent.

Guscott is looking forward to his year ahead as the 74th SU president.

“It’s overwhelming,” Guscott said. “It’s an emotional roller coaster, running in the election, but I think this year’s going to be a good year, especially with MacHall.”

Following his victory, Guscott credited his campaign team.

“It was a huge effort and I relied on so many people,” he said.

Boots thinks the political makeup of campus contributed to his loss.

“We were not ashamed to say that we are conservative and it is hard to win as a conservative on a liberal campus,” Boots said.

Boots believes Guscott’s previous role with the SU as vice-president academic helped Guscott pull away from the pack.

“He’s a great individual and there’s a lot of support from [the] establishment of the SU so it all plays a part,” Boots said.

Tristan Bray won the race for vice-president external, finishing with 54 per cent of the vote. Martin Cruz came in second with 25 per cent, while Jen Tokarek came in third, capturing 21 per cent of the vote.

After losing by just a handful of votes last year, Bray said he earned his victory.

“The theme of this campaign was improvement,” Bray said. “I improved on every point I could from last year. I put in a video this year. I slayed the Gauntlet interview. I started on day one. After 37 hours of no sleep, I did classroom visits. I could not have worked harder.”

With four candidates, the vice-president student life position was the most contested executive position. Patrick Ma took the race with 32 per cent of the vote.

Ma was excited for his win after losing the race for the same position last year.

“I was waking up at 7:00 a.m., getting here for 8:00 a.m. Doing everything I could to engage people and talk to students,” Ma said. “Last year I was so nervous, but this year I put in the work. I have a completely feasible platform I’m looking forward to implementing.”

Zehra Buzreba came in second place with 30 per cent of the vote, Graham Duff placed third with 29 per cent and Austin Campbell rounded out the pack with only 10 per cent.

Two executive positions were acclaimed. Branden Cave will be next year’s vice-president operations and finance, and Alicia Lunz will be vice-president academic.

Shubir Shaikh was acclaimed as the student representative on the Board of Governors.

Julie Le and Kyle Schole were elected as the two senate representatives, with 43 and 31 per cent of the vote respectively. Jonah Zankl finished third.

Voter turnout was 24.7 per cent, with 6,018 undergraduate students voting in this year’s election, less than last year’s voter turnout by about half a per cent.

Current SU president Levi Nilson was pleased with the results.

“[Guscott’s] a great guy and a great candidate,” Nilson said. “The same thing for Tristan and for Patrick as well. Those guys have run campaigns already and lost and they had the courage to come back and it paid off so good for them.”

The incoming faculty representatives were also announced.

In a six-candidate field, Zachary Risdon, Tina Miller and Balraj Brar won the race to be next year’s science representatives.

Jennifer Le and Zareen Tasnim were elected as engineering representatives, while Ryan Wallace and Maximillian Hum were elected as business representatives.

Sagar Grewal took the race for kinesiology representative and Carson Reveen was elected as education representative

Several of the faculty representative positions were acclaimed. While it is often the most contested category, Matt Abalos, Frank Finley, Peter Friedrichsen and Courtney LeBlanc were acclaimed as next year’s arts representatives.

Samantha Sirianni and Steeven Toor will be next year’s medicine representatives, while Mark Shearer will be law representative. Jessica Revington will take over the nursing rep position from Alicia Lunz and Erik Burow will retain his position as veterinary medicine representative.