Kieran ChryslerIn a race that took four rounds of voting to decide, Francesca El Ghossein won 52 per cent of the student vote to become the next Vice-President (Student Life) of the University of Alberta Students’ Union.
Levi Flaman was eliminated in the first round of voting, None of the Above was eliminated in the second,while Kevin Wang lost out in the third. In the fourth and final round, El Ghossein received 52 per cent (2,376) of the votes to Jordan Simao’s 48 per cent (2,163). With such a tight race, El Ghossein congratulated her fellow candidates on a well-run campaign.
“It was very close,” El Ghossein said. “I expected it to be that close, and that motivated me to work even harder in those two weeks (of the campaign).”
After narrowly missing out in the fourth round, Simao said he was disappointed that he wasn’t up onstage for the victory speech. However, he credited El Ghossein for the message she gave to students and a well-run campaign.
With a fellow Campus Saint-Jean student now sitting in the VP (SL) position, Simao said it was high time the faculty was represented in office.
“We’ve been leaders on campus for a while, to toot our own horn,” Simao said. “I couldn’t be more excited for Francesca and Campus Saint-Jean.”
Though he lost the election, Wang said he was glad to have a winner who was open to ideas from other candidates. According to Wang, he had messaged the rest of those in the race earlier in the day, offering his ideas and assistance to the winner.
For Wang, his campaign was “the best he could ever hope for,” and he credited his fellow candidates for running a clean race.
“There was no mud flinging,” Wang said. “There was no hate or anything. Ironically, we’ve become friends over the campaign even though we are competitors.”
Flaman said he was disappointed not because he lost, but because he was defeated in the first round. Pointing to many of the ideas in the race as being common to all platforms, Flaman said his campaign could have gone better. He added that running his campaign without the aid of volunteers hampered his effort.
“During Reading Week while most of the candidates were rehearsing and refining their platforms, I was taking care of the logistical things that volunteers would be doing,” Flaman said. “In addition to running in the race, I was also running against myself as well.”
For El Ghossein, the next weeks will be spent learning the basics of her position and getting to know the SU staff. For now, she said she wanted to give back to the people who helped her get to the position for reaching out to the voters.
“As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to write my thank you notes to everyone who helped out on this campaign,” El Ghossein said. “Often times we think that more conversations are better, but they have to be quality conversations.”
