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Renew BU claims landslide Union win

The Renew BU slate has won the election for the 2010-11 academic year’s Boston University Student Union executive board, after a two-week race between the BUnited, Renew BU and unofficial Greek slates, the Student Elections Commission announced Monday.

Speaking at the George Sherman Union Link to about 50 students, the Student Elections Commission announced that with a total student vote of 3,515, Renew BU won with 2,159 votes for College of Arts and Sciences junior Arthur Emma for president, 2,111 votes for CAS junior Daniel Ellis for vice president and 2,144 votes for School of Management junior Noble for treasurer. Renew BU had no candidate for the secretary position, which BUnited’s Jenna Kreyche, a CAS junior, won with 1,875 votes.

“I’m happy,” Ellis said. “I don’t know what to think. It seems unreal right now. It all paid off. “
Emma, whose slate received about 60 percent of the vote and nearly double the votes of the other two slates combined, said he is excited with the vote totals and the prospect of next year.

“I’m a little shaken up, I guess,” he said. “I’m just really humbled by all of this and I really appreciate all the support and enthusiasm.”

At Monday night’s General Assembly meeting, Arthur said he was too overwhelmed to eat the cake at the results announcement.

“I’m beginning to get my grips back after taking a nice walk around the river,” he said. “Called my parents and my grandma, friends. We’re really excited.”

Ellis said he hopes to have current Union leaders be consultants going forward.

“I want to learn from their mistakes,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat the same mistakes again. Standing on giants’ shoulders, so to speak.”

But Kreyche said late Monday night that she probably will not be serving with Renew BU as secretary.

“I will likely step down and let Renew BU find a secretary,” she said in a message.

Bunited’s James Boggie, a CAS sophomore, said he had hoped Kreyche would work with the other side.

“I hope she sticks with it,” he said. “I don’t know how the team’s going to work together.”

Emma said his slate has already spoken to about five people who are considering the secretary position, which would be filled by a process within Union.

“We want to see if we can find somebody who can mesh with us,” Emma said.

Union president and SMG and CAS senior James Sappenfield said after Monday night’s General Assembly meeting that regardless of Kreyche’s decision, he thinks the slate can find someone.

“Even if she decides she’s not the right person without her right team to represent the students, I do think Renew BU will be able to find a secretary that will sync with them very well,” Sappenfield said.

The BUnited slate, sans Kreyche, was a distant second in the election results, with Taylor Riley, an SMG junior, garnering 676 votes for president, Boggie 739 votes for vice president and SMG sophomore Joseph Nangle 700 votes for treasurer.

“We wanted to win and I know we could do well but at the same time there’s so much drama and so much stress,” Riley said. “I’m relieved it’s over more than anything.”

Boggie said Renew BU ran a solid campaign, and that he enjoyed the process and was glad to have created competition.

“They had a much more visible, much more noisy campaign,” he said. “I’m happy I did it. I think it was important that somebody ran.”

Nangle said he thinks the members of the slate can still make their voices heard on campus on issues they heard about from students during the campaign.

“I’m just happy I’ll be able to fix those things and make BU a better place,” he said. “I don’t think that not being in this position is going to hinder me in that.”

The unofficial write-in Greek slate, consisting of College of Communication sophomore Julian Jensen with 497 votes for president, CAS freshman Stephen Tanico with 463 votes for vice president, CAS sophomore Marisa Feehan with 457 votes for treasurer and COM sophomore Alex Vaccarino with 489 votes for secretary, said being a write-in slate made the campaign difficult.

“I had an interesting time running. Probably not the funnest,” Jensen said. “Maybe Arthur Emma and his lovely cabinet will invite me to help them. I hope they do. I wish all the candidates good luck.”

Sappenfield said going into next year, Renew BU has a significant advantage over this year’s e-board with the number of students who voted. He said with only about 1,500 votes last year, the administration was often skeptical about whether they were truly representing students.

“I think that speaks well for how the administration is going to treat Student Union next year,” he said. “I do think last year we were handicapped to a large degree by the fact that turnout was low.”

Student Activities Executive Director John Battaglino said after the announcement while standing at the Link that he is excited to work with the new Union leaders.

“All I’m concerned with is moving forward,” he said “Now I have a name, a slate I can connect to.”

Union senator and CAS senior Anant Shukla said he too is excited to see the slate get to work, and believes that they had the advantage by starting their campaign several months ago.

“It’s kind of like they had a running start while everyone else was at the starting line. You can just see preparation,” he said. “I had a feeling that they were going to win. They were just highly organized.”

SEC chairman and CAS senior Jeff Maynard said he was surprised by the strong victory.

“They have a lofty agenda and they have lots of students to make happy. I hope they can,” he said. “I was surprised that Renew BU won with such a margin.”

Emma said his team is eager to move forward from the campaign.

“We’re going to apply this same enthusiasm to Union next year,” he said.

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