On Thursday evening, Amy Schenk was elected to serve as 2017-18 ASUO president, with her unopposed campaign members winning all positions on the student government’s senate and executive, excluding one position because of a ballot error.
“I cannot be thankful enough for the amount of support I got from students, faculty and other folks who pushed me to continue running for the position, and I am really excited for the year to come,” Schenk said.
A total of 1,439 students voted in the 2017 Regular Election. Schenk won with 860, against 87 write-in votes.
Less than 4 percent of the student population voted on the president/vice president ballot — a significant decrease from last year’s regular election, in which 24 percent of students voted, resulting in a win for current president Quinn Haaga.
UO For You Internal Vice President Tess Mor said she “was pretty happy with the amount of people that voted” and felt like the slate’s message was well-communicated.
Tess Mor will serve as Internal Vice President in 2017-18. (Courtesy of Tess Mor)
“I think for one campaign we definitely got a good voter turnout,” Mor said. “I thought we did a really good job to inform people to the best of our abilities.”
Mor stated that her first goal in office would be to support advocacy groups.
“I want to meet with all the different advocacy groups and get to know them better and get to know what their needs are,” she said.
UO For You External Vice President Vickie Gimm declined to comment.
All members of Schenk’s campaign in UO For You won their races, except one due to an error in the ballot.
The ballot incorrectly identified Maria Gallegos as running for an already-filled senate seat representing music, art and public policy majors. She intended to run for Senate Seat 13, representing history majors. This caused music majors to vote for Gallegos, rather than history majors. There will be a corrected ballot that will run next week on DuckWeb.
Vickie Gimm will serve as External Vice President in 2017-18. (Aaron Nelson/Emerald)
No candidate ran for Senate Seat 22, graduate studies in arts and humanities. There were seven write-in votes, but no candidate received more than the required 50 percent of votes.
All ballot measures passed. Students voted for an elections coordinator, who is in charge of regulating elections, to be appointed 11 weeks prior to the election period; OSPIRG, a student advocacy group, will be funded for the 2018-20 academic years; the ASUO student senate’s ability to charge an incidental fee that is “more than necessary” will be limited; and ASUO will be required to make “every effort” to make UO more accessible to students with disabilities.
