The results of the Students Union election came out yesterday. The full vote numbers aren’t online yet, in the meantime the elected officers were announced, as follows:

In the presidential round I was the first candidate to be eliminated with 78 votes. While I didn’t expect to win, I expected to at least come out in front of Lyn and Samer, who didn’t do any campaigning at all. 78 people. That’s really not much. There were also two votes with Re-Open Nominations ranked first, and me ranked second. Bastards. I hadn’t thought of that as a voting strategy.

Joel won president. He pretty much ran as the rugby club candidate, I guess it remains to see what he’s actually like in office. He was closely followed up by Ashley who had ~800 votes against Joel’s ~900. I’ve clearly missed a trick somewhere because I don’t know where all that support came from. Lyn, Samer and Andrew each won around 100 votes, I wasn’t really paying attention at that point.

Tom won an overwhelming number of votes for his re-election and so did Paul. I don’t quite understand Tom, his campaign material alluded to him supporting Labour, but he was standing against Mary (an active Labour Party memeber). He always seems sympathetic, but at the same time unwilling to commit to anything, maybe he’s just… confused? Anyway, he’ll carry on in his position next year.

As for the Women’s Officer, I thought Subi had it nailed. She had a lot of support, she’s well-known and well-liked and has a consistent record feminist organising. It was actually a close race with someone called Claire Mayne, and Subi lost. This is strange because Claire didn’t have a manifesto and as far as I know she didn’t actively campaign. On facebook she lists her political views as ‘Conservative Party’. Huh.

Overall the results look like the time and effort we put into campaigning didn’t translate into more votes. The students at Brookes just weren’t that interested in our platform. I stood for election this year because nobody else aside from Mary and Subi wanted to stand on an explicitly left-wing platform. I will probably go for election again in my final year too, but not for president.

I’ll submit some more motions to the Student Union AGM, again only because nobody else will do it. The Students Union officers don’t seem to like the AGM, it makes them uncomfortable. At least it’ll give people something to talk about.