2021 SU election results held online
By Cristina Paolozzi, Sophia Lopez, Aymen Sherwani, Rachneet Randhawa and Danise Simpelo, March 4 2021—
On March 4, the winners of the 2021 Students’ Union general election were announced online over Zoom. Although held in a digital space, 103 participants were logged into the Zoom call, and 3,055 student votes were cast. The results were announced by Chief Returning Officers Feyre Gezahegn and Amanda Cha.
With 16 acclamations in this years’ election, only four races were ultimately contested — Faculty of Nursing representative, Faculty of Kinesiology representative, Faculty of Arts representative and president.
Successful candidates responded to the Gauntlet on their wins over social media.
Nicole Schmidt will be the next SU president with 76 per cent of the vote.
Expressing excitement upon hearing her name announced, Schmidt posted the results of her historic win on her social media page. When reached for comment, this is what she had to say:
“I am absolutely thrilled right now. I am incredibly excited to be serving the Students’ Union as the President for the 79th SLC and looking forward to the year ahead. This was a very hard-fought race from both sides and I was very honoured to be one of the two women on this first female-only presidential ballot. As to my next moves, I am looking forward to the executive onboarding process and doing further consultations with Frank Finley before assuming office. Definitely one of the first things I want to do is secure the CR/F compassionate grading option for students. I also want to work with administration to understand the impact that the provincial post-secondary cuts will have on the University of Calgary and ways in which we can lessen this impact for students.”
Areeb Qayyum will be the next Faculty of Kinesiology rep, with 45 per cent of the vote.
“At the moment, I’d just like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the community that has brought me this far. I’ve grown so much as a Knes student and I am beyond honored to be able to give back like this. Thank you!” Qayyum stated.
Dorsa Zamanpour will be the Faculty of Nursing rep with 52 per cent of the vote.
“I am so overcome with gratitude and excitement. I think I’m still in shock a little bit. My faculty means so much to me and I’m so happy that I’m going to be able to contribute what I can to it, and to my peers,” said Dorsa.
With four open positions in the Faculty of Arts race, Sofia Huarte Aguilar, Justin Gotta, Fayo Abdi and Matthew Herring will be the next Faculty of Arts reps.
Huarte Aguilar, Gotta and Abdi tie the Faculty of Arts race, all three of them equally holding 17 per cent of the vote, followed by Herring, who holds 14 per cent of the vote.
“It feels amazing! We as students face a challenging year ahead and I look to hit the ground running to pursue my platform and start representing students yet again!” Gotta exclaimed.
“Winning the Arts Rep position is very exciting and I hope to work with the other Arts reps and the SU as a whole to look into issues that students are experiencing and advocate for them. I want to send a huge thank you to everyone who voted for me and I hope we see some massive progress in the arts department, SU and the university as a whole,” said Herring.
“I am so honoured to be representing the Arts again and grateful for the students who re-elected me! I can’t wait for my new term to begin, excited to work with the incoming representatives. The first thing I want to do is get in contact with my new co-representatives to plan and assist in their transition! We all have a ton of different and overlapping goals, so I’m very excited to see what we decide to tackle first,” said Abdi.
“I’m beyond happy, honored and humbled to have been elected to represent Arts students! Our work together is only now getting started, and we’ve got a long road ahead of us before we can rest easy about tuition, but I know that this SU will do everything we can to make sure that U of C students get a fair deal. Congratulations also to the rest of the candidates, and to the rest of the Arts Reps team with whom I’m incredibly excited to work with!
Let’s get some things done!!” Huarte Aguilar stated.
For the full list of representatives and executives in the 79th Student Legislative Council, check out the SU’s website.
This article has been updated to include comments from both Sofia Huarte Aguilar and Nicole Schmidt.