Despite sanctions preventing them from campaigning Friday, the Real slate captured 38 percent of the votes, beating out New Blood and Perpetual Motion in the race for the Executive Board of the Student Union.
Real garnered 914 of the 2,393 votes — a 15 percent voter turnout — while New Blood attracted 850 votes to take second place and third place Perpetual Motion received 629 votes.
Trembling hands, uneasy chatter and unmentioned hostility dominated the George Sherman Union Ziskind Lounge Friday night as the three slates anxiously waited for Student Union Elections Commission chair John Macom to announce the winners.
As Macom announced New Blood’s second place finish, Real members, realizing their win, screamed, cheered and cried in excitement.
The Vice President-elect of Public Relations Laurie Steinberg was ecstatic after her slate’s victory.
“We accomplished our ultimate goal of allowing the Boston University student body to see what we were about,” Steinberg said. “We didn’t let anything throughout this election get in the way of that. This whole time all we wanted to do was make sure our message got through, and it’s pretty clear that we did.”
Although Perpetual Motion was the sole slate that did not violate the mass e-mail rule, it received the least amount of votes. As tears filled Motion’s Vice President of Residence Life candidate Lisa Kurdziel’s eyes, she maintained her slate ran a fair race.
“We ran a very clean race — one that I can be proud of, one that all of [Perpetual Motion] could be proud of,” Kurdziel said. “I don’t know if everyone else could say that.”
President-elect Mike Moffo said his first task is to unify students and opposing slate members who quarreled during the election.
“One of the worst things that comes out of the elections is the division that come from people who gave support to the different slates during the campaign,” Moffo said. “My first task is to minimize the lingering effects from those divisions. I have no leftover animosity toward anyone.”
With 2,393 voters, there was a 1 percent decrease from last year. This year’s number, however, is down nearly 20 percent from two years ago when nearly 3,000 students made their choices online.
Macom said the low voter turnout simply represents students’ overall involvement with BU activities. As the SUEC chair for next year, he said he will advertise earlier to attract students to run.
“There’s a great amount of apathy everywhere,” he said. “A great way to change it is to start publicizing a while in advance. Hopefully, next year there will be one commissioner from each college to get more students to run on slates. If each college has at least two slates running, that will be a lot more people who care.”
Moffo said while the voter turnout may increase if more slates run, he said voter interest may also increase if students are involved in the Union during the academic year.
In the college government elections, Velvet Revolution won control of the College of Arts and Sciences government with a landslide win over Affirmative Action. Revolution received 74 percent of the vote to Action’s 26 percent. The CAS Forum had the only voter increase with an additional 9 percent of voters.
The College of General Studies government was the closest race of the three contested. Lead won with 106 votes while The Right Stuff came in a close second with 89 votes.
New Blood’s executive vice-presidential candidate Keshav Lall, whose America Online account was used to send a mass e-mail to more than 150 students in the School of Management, said he had no comment last night on his slate’s performance in the election.
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