Only a few hours after the ballots had closed, the University Election Commission released the results for Central Student Government executive positions. LSA juniors Chris Osborn and Hayley Sakwa, the first candidates of forUM, will become CSG president and vice president conditional on the outcome of pending UEC hearings.
While forUM topped the ballots with 3,413 votes, falling short by less than 500 came veteran youMICH with a total of 2,928 tallies. Business junior Scott Christopher and LSA freshman Ethan Michaeli, the sole independent candidates, secured 2,538 votes; momentUM’s candidates LSA freshman Nick Swider and running mate LSA junior Jill Clancy secured 702 votes; and Ashley Garrick and Chane Karaga of the Defend Affirmative Action Party gained 250.
“I’m incredibly appreciative that the students have put their trust in me and to serve for them for the coming year,” Osborn said.
Osborn said his first act as president would be to get in contact with his opponents.
“(I’m going to) sit down with each of my former opponents and talk about their different ideas and see how I can (integrate their goals) and unite campus as a single body,” he said. “I promised that I’m going to try to serve all students and address as many concerns that I can.”
In an election that drew 10,044 votes — 24 percent of the student body — forUM secured 33.98 percent of votes. This year’s elections showed an increase in voter turnout, surpassing the 19.96 percent of highly contentious 2012 elections.
In 2012 election cycle, current President Manish Parikh and Vice President Omar Hashwi beat youMICH candidates by approximately 150 votes in the race to the executive seats. Despite the month of hearings that followed, Parikh and Haswi were allowed to keep their seats at the helm.
Beyond the executive office, parties were also running candidates for assembly representatives.
With 58 candidates running for 21 available seats, the battle for LSA representative was the most competitive of all. After 4,055 votes were tallied and weighted in order of preference, forUM candidates had a clear majority, winning 16 seats, and youMICH secured five.
Once again in the majority, forUM won five out of seven seats in the College of Engineering, with youMICH securing the remainder. Rackham Graduate School elected seven independent candidates alongside two running with forUM and one with youMICH. Business students in youMICH won three out of four representative seats.
The single seats for the Architecture, Dentistry, and Kinesiology colleges and the Art and Design, Medicine, and Music, Theatre & Dance schools were swept by forUM, while youMICH won the seats for DPS Oversight, the School of Education and School of Nursing. Independent candidates won seats for the Information and Pharmacy, and the Law schools.
The Defend Affirmative Action Party only won representation in the School of Social Work. No candidates from newcomer party momentUM have been elected.
Daily Staff Reporters Rachel Premack and Stephanie Shenouda contributed to this report.