On Monday, Bentley Corbett-Wilson and Mona Patel were announced as the winners of the Student Government Association presidency and vice-presidency for the 2016–2017 school year. Sanjum Singh was elected vice president for student organizations and Surovi Bain was elected treasurer. Wilson and Patel beat out rivals Tristan Oetker and Pandora Wilson by a 0.5 percent margin.
Wilson told The Retriever, “Im incredibly thankful for all the support that we’ve gotten from everyone and I really do believe that Mona and I are going to do so many great things for SGA. I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store for us.”
Patel echoed the sentiment, saying, “I just want to thank everyone who supported us. We really want to make a change on this campus and this is the way to go … I’m speechless really … congratulations to everyone who won and I can’t wait to start making changes.”
However, following the announcement an email was sent out by Election Board Chair Robert Caverly. Caverly wrote:
“Just as an FYI, the results released this afternoon were tentative and have not been verified by the Election Board as authentic yet since the official results from the poll have not been released … At no point during the election was the [election] board able to see the results. In past years, the election board chair has had full access to these results in order to minor their authenticity.”
In response to the email, Craig Berger, coordinator of student life for campus and civic engagement and advisor to the SGA, said, “I shared the results with Robert in the same way I’ve shared them with past Election Board chairs. I’ve also invited Robert to meet so he can verify the accuracy of the announced results.”
The election also served as a platform for voting on Proposition One, a piece of SGA legislation that has been a point of contention this semester. The proposition would allow for the use of an instant-runoff voting system in future elections for SGA Executive Office. The proposition passed with 760 votes in favor, or 66.7 percent of the total.
