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In last week’s elections, Syracuse University’s Student Association saw a 2.8% voter turnout, SA’s Board of Elections Chair Otto Sutton said.

The elections were held from Monday to Friday via a Google Form sent to students’ emails, with 19 vacancies open for voting. The ballot included first-year and at-large representatives, as well as representatives for each of SU’s individual schools.

Candidates have been notified of the election results, which will be shared campus-wide in an email Monday, Sutton said. The new elected members will be sworn in at the beginning of Monday night’s general assembly meeting, and SA will share information about the new representatives on its social media pages throughout the week, he said.

The majority of the newly elected SA members are freshmen, SA President Will Treloar said.

While such a strong freshman presence is common at the beginning of a new academic year, Treloar said he hopes this freshmen class will bring new ideas to the organization, especially since their time in college has been less affected by the COVID-19 pandemic so far.

“It also gives an opportunity to see what this university is going to look like post-COVID, and I think this will be one of those classes that will kind of be defining for the age of Student Association,” Treloar said.

In fall elections, Sutton said it’s common to see lower turnout, comparing it to the lower turnout national elections experience in primaries versus general elections. SA’s spring elections include voting for the next academic year’s SA president and vice president, among other positions. Last fall, voter turnout was 4.4%, a drop from the 9.9% turnout of spring 2022 elections.

Sutton said this fall’s cycle had the turnout he expected, with the election for first-year representatives being the only competitive one.

“When we look at our fall election, it’s really about intake. That’s when we elect our six first-year candidates, and that’s when we fill a lot of open seats, so it’s really about getting people in the doors,” Sutton said.

In addition to the first-year representatives elected last week, SA appointed five students to the Board of Elections Commission, the group that verifies election results, last Monday.

Sutton, who has been on the Board of Elections for three years, said the commission hasn’t had more than four members during his time on the Board. Now, the commission has nine total members.

“That alone is really exciting to have from an organizational perspective, to have people who can help chip in with the work,” Sutton said. “It’s going to allow us to do our work even better than we’ve been doing.”

Looking forward to the rest of the fall semester, SA plans to further its ‘Cuse Otto Vote initiative to increase student voter registration for national elections. The initiative was first proposed in 2019, but Sutton said it has primarily been an idea and name since then. This year, he said, will entail turning the idea into an organization that can help students through work on campus.

One of the current goals for ‘Cuse Otto Vote is to create a website that serves as a centralized hub for students to access information about registering to vote and civic engagement. SA also plans to grow a social media presence for the initiative, Sutton said.

‘Cuse Otto Vote includes a plan presented in Nov. 2022 that would place a hold on students’ MySlice accounts and restrict them from registering for classes until they interacted with presented voting information. Sutton said SA is in a “very early” discussion stage with SU administrators about this tenet and that it is exploring every option.

On Monday, SA will begin its programming for its annual Mental Health Awareness Week, including tabling events, therapy dogs and mediation sessions. SA is also hosting Amped Up For Mental Health, a benefit concert for mental health charities. The event will take place on Thursday in the Schine Underground and feature student artists. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and tickets are $5, Treloar said.

Later in October, SA will host its second annual Harvest Festival on Oct. 28 from 4 to 7 p.m. The event will take place on the Women’s Building field and involves free food, lawn games, a chili cook-off as well as a flea market to promote sustainable fashion.

Published on October 2, 2023 at 12:09 am

Contact Claire: charri39@syr.edu