Strathclyde Students Head to the Polls

Strathclyde students turned out in force on Monday 18 March and Tuesday 19 March to vote for a new Executive. Polls were open for 30 hours and the campus was covered with candidates’ publicity material. For the first time ever, the Students’ Association employed 6 Election Ambassadors to raise awareness of the elections and help students vote at polling stations in the library and in the Union. Student elections typically suffer from poor engagement and after last year’s 12% turnout, USSA decided to take action to allow more students to have a say in how their Union is run.

By the time polls closed, 2,991 students had voted, representing around 16% of students. Although USSA missed its target of 20% of eligible students voting, 2013 saw Strathclyde’s second highest election turnout in 10

years and the third highest turnout ever. Students were also asked whether they would like to allow international students on exchange and ERASMUS programmes to vote in our elections and students overwhelmingly voted in favour, which means there will be more students eligible to vote in future elections. Two other referenda questions were put to students: permanently reducing the number of sabbatical officers from six to five and implementing the updated equal opportunities policy – both these proposals passed with a majority of students voting in favour.

Anastasia Radchenko was elected Vice Chair Education. Unfortunately, no other candidates stood for any Vice Chair positions. James Reid was elected Vice President Sports and Wellbeing, Roza Salih was elected Vice President Diversity and Advocacy, Joshua Hong was elected Vice President Activities and Development, James Ferns was elected Vice President Education and Kwaku Adjei was elected President.

Kwaku praised the high standard of campaigns from the other candidates for President, Paul Hynes and James McIntyre and promised to fight cuts to education that will affect our students. Outgoing President Malcolm Moir added that he was delighted to represent Strathclyde’s students for 2012-13 and wished Kwaku all the best for next year.

The new Executive will officially enter their posts on 29 June and we will be interviewing all the successful candidates in our Freshers’ Week edition.

 

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