SGA elects new executive board
By JUSTIN LI · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 14, 2011
Last Monday, the results of the Student Government Association (SGA) Executive Elections were announced. Current junior class president Ardi Mendoza was elected executive president; current sophomore executive treasurer Wyatt Larkin was elected vice president; current sophomore class senator Joanna Gawlik was elected treasurer; and freshman Annie Scavelli was elected secretary. Voter turnout reached an all-time high of 1663 voters, or 35 percent of the student body, a 5 percent increase from the previous year’s turnout.
Junior Mark Dirzulaitis, current SGA Executive President, remarked on the high intensity and effort by candidates in this year’s election.
“It’s really worth noting how [many] passionate campaign efforts we saw this election period,” Dirzulaitis said at last Tuesday’s SGA meeting. “It’s wonderful to see all this deep-vested interest in SGA. It goes to show how far we’ve come as an organization and where we’re headed.”
Mendoza defeated his opponent, junior Kirk Sabnani, by 724 votes to 666 votes, or 44 percent of the total votes to 40 percent of the total votes. Larkin won by default due to the disqualification of his competitor, junior Scott Barrett. However, due to an appeal by Barrett that was not resolved by the time of the election, Barrett’s name remained on the ballot and he won the popular vote 759 to 630, or 46 percent to 38 percent of the total votes.
Gawlik, in a field of five candidates, defeated her closet two
competitors, sophomore Nick Trenton and sophomore Stephanie Valarezo, by 498 to 438 and 326 votes, or 30 percent to 26 percent and 20 percent of the total votes, respectively. The remaining two candidates, junior Thomas (TJ) Bozada and Andrew Cappuchino, each earned 158 and 95 votes respectively, or 10 percent and 6 percent of the total votes.
Scavelli defeated her competitor, freshmen Alex Dash, by 789 to 561 votes, or 47 percent to 34 percent of the total votes.
Vote percentages do not add to 100 percent due to abstentions and write-in candidates. Complete statistical data on the Executive Elections can be found at the SGA website: www.jhusga.com
Many of the winners were pleased with how the election progressed.
“I’m very, very happy. I felt the other ticket and everyone in the field did a great job about campaigning,” Mendoza said. “A lot of good issues were brought up. And the amount of voter turnout shows we’re going in the right direction.”
“I’m certainly honored that the Student Body chose me to be next year’s SGA treasurer. I think that this year had a particularly talented and motivated pool of candidates for all positions and I really enjoyed the race,” Gawlik wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. “Serving on the Executive board will allow me to act on many of the changes that I would like to see at Hopkins; I feel lucky to have such a great opportunity.”
“It’s a great feeling to have won! Introducing myself and my ideas to students I did not know seems to have paid off and it is very rewarding to see the results,” Scavelli wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Unfortunately for Larkin, the joy of his victory was dampened by the disqualification of his competitor, Junior Class Senator Scott Barrett.
“I am not really celebrating because I won by default, but I am pleased that my ticket and I ran a good, honest campaign. I guess that is worth being proud of,” Larkin wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Barrett, who was running for Vice President, was disqualified after the SGA’s Committee for Student Elections (CSE) found Barrett to have violated one of the election rules by utilizing the list server of Mike Mattia, the Hopkins Athletic Director, to mass e-mail student athletes about his campaign.
“[Barrett] had the athletic director send out a mass e-mail on his behalf to all the student athletes telling them to vote for him,” Rohit Dayal, Head Chair of CSE, said.
One of the candidates reported the violation to the CSE and after review, decided to disqualify him from the election.
“It was a clear-cut decision — direct or indirect utilization of services to gain votes,” Dayal said.
Dayal explained that the reasoning behind the rule is to ensure fair elections. One candidate being able to repeatedly mass message a large portion of the student body gives him a distinct and unfair advantage over other campaigns. With athletes representing 20 percent of the student body and the self-promotional content of the e-mail, the CSE agreed that it was a violation of the rule.
However, Barrett argued that, according to the wording of the CSE Constitution, no violation had occurred. Article 7, Section f(iv), which Barrett had been accused of violating, states that “No candidate may use any listserv or mass emailing services of student groups or organizations in which Johns Hopkins undergraduates are members of.”
Barrett argued that the e-mail that Mattia had sent was not sent via either listserv, a server in which an e-mail sent to the single address sends the e-mail to all names listed in that server, or a mass e-mailing service or third party bulk e-mail programs, but by Mattia individually entering each name into the e-mail and was therefore not a violation.
The Judiciary of the SGA felt that while not a violation by the letter, Barrett’s actions were still encompassed by them.
“By definition you did not utilize a listserv or mass emailing service, however the Judiciary believes that the spirit of this section does indeed cover emails of your type,” the Judiciary Board wrote in its reply to Barrett’s appeal. Barrett argued that violation of the “spirit” of a rule was insufficient grounds for disqualification. He argued further that the large margin he won by, 129 votes, was a serious disenfranchisement of student votes.
“The fact that I won by this many votes signifies that I’m the Vice President the school wants,” Barrett said.
Larkin, however, felt the e-mails may have been responsible for Barrett’s victory in the votes.
“Because Scott’s violation was on such a large scale, it is impossible to know how the race would have turned out if we had both played by the rules; undoubtedly it would have been close,” Larkin wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Barrett refuted the claim that the e-mail Mattia had sent was responsible for his victory.
“[Of the 600 that received the e-mail] no shot 140 voted strictly because of that e-mail,” Barrett said.
Controversy aside, each winner revealed a dedication and passion for their positions in the SGA.
“From years of past student government experience and involvement in various groups on campus, the SGA’s involvement in my own activities is integral. My campaign for secretary became my desire to take on a proactive role, rather than just an onlooker of this involvement,” Scavelli wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
“When SGA has good internal cooperation and communication, we tend to get things done quickly, and done well. I would like to see us in that mode all the time next year, and I think I have a good shot at making the changes that will facilitate that,” Larkin wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
“As member of the Executive board, I will have the opportunity to work directly with administrators in shaping life at Hopkins, which will provide me with a great opportunity to communicate student concerns and ideas directly with the administration (an opportunity that was more rare as a senator),” Gawlik wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
“[Being Executive President] is a better chance to contact the administration and see things from the top . . . I can hopefully take a more active role in dictating policy for next year . . . A lot of ideas get lost to the wayside. I want to take my role as leader of the student government to make sure everyone stays on task,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza, Larkin and Gawlik ran on a platform composed of four main points: improving student services, improving academic services, addressing security concerns and increasing events and funding. Some of their specific points included creating an off-campus housing database, improving vegetarian dining options, creating moderately priced upperclassmen meal plans, making ISIS more student friendly, reforming the Merlin course evaluation system, addressing traffic concerns on and near campus and providing busing to events in the Baltimore/DC area.
Their detailed platform can be found online at: www.jhusga2011.com
Although the new Executive Board will not assume their new positions until the first day of the fall semester, the new Executive Board members plan to begin meeting informally as early as next week to begin discussions on potential goals and plans for the upcoming academic year.
“We can do plenty this semester and especially during the summer to lay the groundwork,” Mendoza said. “By the end of the year we can have quantifiable improvements.”
Mendoza mentioned three specific goals he currently has in mind: establishing an Executive budget; reforming internal redundancies within the SGA and its interactions with the students, specifically the SGA website and making it more useful to students and beginning to work immediately with the Hopkins administration on goals and plans for next year to better coordinate the efforts of the two groups.
Larkin remarked on the specifics of internal SGA reform.
“There are some problems with how the finance system is structured within the organization, and some institutionalized communication issues that can all be fixed rather easily. Because I have witnessed these issues from both the senate and the exec board side, I should be in a good position to fix them as VP,” Larkin wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Additionally, the new Executive Board plans to survey student groups to receive input on his goals.
“Through the summer, we intend to talk with student groups to get an idea of how they feel about our platform,” Mendoza said.
This year’s Executive Elections received a record number of votes, a result Dayal attributed to the efforts of both the candidates and the CSE.
“The two main candidates did a lot of campaigning,” Dayal said.
Dayal described how the ticket of Mendoza, Larkin, Gawlik and Dash collaborated to create a YouTube video outlining their platform and how the ticket consisting of Kirk Sabnani utilized lawn signs to advertise for its campaign.
“This year had two intense tickets,” Dirzulaitis said.
Similarly the CSE stepped up its efforts to advertise about the elections.
“We put a full page ad [in The News-Letter] showing who all the candidates were,” Dayal said. While newspaper advertisements were a new tactic this year, the SGA also employed an old tactic of e-mail reminders during voting period too.
“Dayal asked me to release [an e-mail] at the beginning of voting period, the middle and seven hours before voting closed,” Dirzulaitis said, regarding a regularly used promotional tactic by the CSE.
“It was important to have a bunch of people that are campaigning hard and have a large social network,” Dirzulaitis said. “A lot of people felt they had a stake in the election . . . [otherwise they’d be] less motivated to vote.”
Dayal noted that the increase seen this year has been part of a trend of increasing voter turnout over the past two years.
“The last two years I’ve been on the committee we’ve been making efforts to increase turnout,” Dayal said. “Two years ago, voter turnout was 26 percent; one year ago, it was 30 percent.”
“I’m really happy with the trend. The reason I ran freshmen year was to increase student involvement.” Mendoza said.
“I think this is a great start for things that will only improve in the future. I want to thank everyone for this upward trend of student involvement.”