Emory’s Elections Board released its results last night for this year’s student government elections, appointing College junior Max Zoberman as Student Government Association (SGA) president, College junior Molly Zhu as College Council (CC) president and Goizueta Business School junior Ria Sabnis as Student Programming Council (SPC) president.
The results followed this year’s voting period, which began on Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. and lasted until Feb. 29 at 8 p.m., with 2,888 students participating in the presidential election process for the 2016-2017 academic year.
Zoberman won with 2,055 votes — 71.2 percent of the vote, against Goizueta Business School sophomore Daniel Rodriguez with 829 votes. Zoberman said after the win that he is already excited to begin working toward his goals.
“Now, I’m thinking about everything I talked about in my speeches and every promise I made to students,” he said. “Twenty four hours from now, [I] will hit the ground running.”
Zhu ran unopposed and won the position of CC President with 1,899 votes. The remaining 20.2 percent of voters, totaling 482 votes, selected no confidence. Students only had the one alternative option to vote no confidence for candidates who ran unopposed.
After the win, Zhu said that she is excited to fill her position and looks forward to the changes that the new CC leadership will execute.
“I think we have a really strong team to make the changes that we have decided to make and continue to carry out the initiatives that we have planned,” Zhu said.
With 67.8 percent of the votes, Sabnis emerged victorious against Goizueta Business School junior Marisa Hann for the position of SPC president. Sabnis received 1,939 votes while Hann received 922.
SGA’s newly elected Executive Vice President and Goizueta Business School sophomore Gurbani Singh received 2,551 votes, which is 86.6 percent. Singh ran unopposed, with 396 voters selecting no confidence.
CC’s newly elected Vice President, College sophomore Cassidy Schwartz, beat out College junior Dennis Kamara by a close margin: Schwartz received 1,218 votes, 52 percent of the total votes casted, while Kamara received 1,125, which is 48 percent.
College junior Amy Hou and College sophomore William Palmer were also both selected as SGA’s College-wide Representatives, garnering 1,728 and 1,541 votes, respectively. They defeated Huiying Zhu, who received 743 votes.
College junior Jonah Chang defeated College sophomore James Martin for the position of Residence Hall Association (RHA) President, collecting 1,184 of 2,236 votes.
B-school junior Kyle Nelson won the position of BBA Council President, with 380 voters favoring him and 67 voting no confidence.
Students also voted to pass the SGA Committee on Diversity and Equity Amendment, which will add a joint standing committee to the Student Legislature. The committee will allow a long-term structure of opinions related toward Emory’s “move towards a more equitable campus” and its attempt to “recognize the importance of striving for equity among diverse students,” according to the amendment proposal. Duties will include reviewing legislation related to Emory’s Nondiscrimination Statement, ensuring equitable and diverse student input in SGA’s policies and holding an open forum for students to speak about diversity issues on campus at least once each semester.
Eighty three point two percent of the 2,756 voters were in favor of this proposition, and 16.8 percent, or 555 voters, voted against.
The full list of results can be found here: Spring 2016 Election Results
