By Christopher Mateo
Editor-in-Chief
The new Associated Students Inc. board of directors have been selected with a voter turnout of 7.5 percent.
On April 7, the winners were announced. Now they are waiting for the new year to begin to start their term.
Mariela Gomez won the president position, and Precious Nwaoha won the executive vice president position. Both Gomez and Nwaoha won 100 percent of the votes because they ran unopposed.
“I feel pretty excited. I’m ready for the new year to star, ready to hit the road running. We have a lot of plans for this upcoming year, and we’re just ready to get the team together and put it to work,” said Nwaoha
Nwaoha plans to have Title IX training by the ASI board done immediately. However, she wants to bring more information about Title IX to the new board during the ASI orientation.
“I’m going to make sure that ASI as an organization goes through [the training]. I pretty much will be putting that together over summer, and that would be my first step in office,” said Nwaoha.
Gomez is excited to start her term as ASI president, and she said that her experience in ASI will aid her in transitioning into the new school year. Gomez, however, knows that there is more work to be done.
“I honestly feel like there is still so much more work to do just because I already hold an executive position. I feel like the transition hopefully is a little easier, just because I have the experience with the inner workings of the organization.
One of Gomez’s goals is to start a public relations campaign for ASI to let students know what ASI is and what they do for students.
During the first day in office, Gomez would like to take care of the budget for ASI, provided by President Horace Mitchell.
“It’s hard to narrow it down. Essentially that would come after doctor Mitchell disperses the money to us,” said Gomez.
Mohammed Cook ran against Brittany Fowler for Vice President of Campus Life. Mohammed Cook won receiving 56.2 percent of the votes.
“Stoked. It’s cool seeing finally having a positions to where I can make things cool. I’ve never been in office before, so I don’t know what happens next. I’m still learning, but I’m stoked and excited,” said Cook, who would like to start the year launching social media campaigns.
“I need Ilaria’s guidance. It all depends as to where the direction of Ilaria kind of puts me. I would love to start my video campaigns,” said Cook.
Emma Kiaie and Justin McKinley ran against each other for the Vice President of Finance.
McKinley won receiving 71.2 percent of the votes.
McKinley feels relieved that he has won.
“I feel like a weight has been relieved from my body. I am really excited that I won, and I can’t wait to get into office and to learn more about my duties and responsibilities,” said McKinley.
McKinley would like to know that his committee knows who he is and that he gets to know them.
There were a total of 17 positions available, and of those 17, seven of them were running unopposed.
There were six positions left vacant that will now be appointed by the new ASI board. These positions are still vacant, and the priority deadline is on April 21st.
According to Nwaoha, the candidates who lost in the election were invited to apply for the vacant positions.
“We sent out an email the day the results came out to all the people that ran in the election and lost saying that these are the positions open. We let these people know, even though you didn’t get into the position you wanted we still have these open positions ready for you if you are still interested,” said Nwaoha.
In 2016, the voter turnout for the ASI elections was 14 percent due to voting done over RunnerSync. However, this year the voter turnout was at 7.5 percent.
Nwaoha believes the reason why there was a small voter turnout this year is due to the fact that there was a lack of choices when it came to the presidency and executive vice presidency positons.
“This year I feel like there wasn’t as much interest in student government, because the two top positions didn’t have anyone running against them,” said Nwaoha.
Gomez is surprised to see such a small turnout because she thinks ASI advertised voting.
“I was actually really surprised, because you would think the numbers would increase because we advertised it so much,” said Gomez.
Gomez said the efforts ASI made to get students to vote went as far as presenting in classes about voting and meeting with students face-to-face.
Cook, however, thinks that the campaigning was much friendlier than last year’s elections.
“This year, it was just clean, happy campaigns. Usually there is some kind of drama. It creates more interest in politics, because we just had a bunch of happy people running against each other, because no one was bashing anyone. No one paid attention,” said Cook.
