Students’ Association elections resulted in a runoff for freshman vice president, 30 candidates elected and 28 empty seats.
Twenty-five candidates ran unopposed in the election so they automatically won. In the vote for freshman vice president, Jonathan Ladd won 141 votes and Logan Dybdahl won 87 votes beating their opponents, Jenna Suzman and German Carranza . Since neither won more than 50 percent of the 389 total votes, the runoff will take place Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Freshman can vote online at acustudents.org/vote.
Shelby Short won freshman class president with 225 votes against Nick Skeffington, who got 132 votes and Zach Hellen, who got 19 votes. Short said she campaigned by meeting people and using flyers and social media, but she didn’t see her opponents campaigning.
“Being able to talk to people and genuinely connect to them, that’s just something that’s really important to me is getting to know my peers. No status that is put on my name matters to me, it just matters that I can connect to them.”
All three sophomore class races were close with winners beating their opponents by only a few votes. Julia Kennedy, psychology major from Lubbock, beat Ty Kelley for sophomore class president by just 11 votes.
“Julia and I are both really involved on campus and online voting made it really easy for students to vote this year,” said Kelley, sophomore information technology major from San Antonio. “We both campaigned pretty hard and it made it really hard for people to decide.”
Kelley said he plans to participate in SA by taking one of the open seats in the College of Arts and Sciences. The SA executive cabinet will appoint officers to each of the empty seats and will give first preference to those who lost their campaigns and still want to participate.
New sophomore class treasurer, Madeline Dayton, was also friends with her opponent Evan Beck, whom she beat by 15 votes. She said the competitive race brought in more sophomore votes.
“My opponent and I are very involved on campus in a lot of different organizations and we’re both in the same friend groups,” said Dayton, sophomore global studies major from Katy. “I really tried to target part of the sophomore class I didn’t actually know.”
Max Preston, convergence journalism major from Amarillo, beat Allen Martin, sophomore English major from Abilene, for sophomore vice president by 38 votes.
“He’s one of my good friends so it was tough to run against him,” Preston said. “We just like each other and we want the best for each other even if that means we’re running in office against each other.”
