Frank Cunningham ’16 has been elected Student Assembly president with 966 votes, and Julia Dressel ’17 has been elected vice president with 1,149 votes. This reflects 59 percent and 70 percent of voters, respectively.
Jake Gaba ’16 and Penelope Williams ’16 received 578 and 147 votes for the presidency and vice presidency, respectively. Williams ran as a write-in candidate.
Only 1,632 of 4,501 students voted this year, marking a 31 percent-decline from last year when 2,376 students voted, election planning and advising committee chair Derek Whang ’17 said. This year’s turnout is the lowest in the past three years, with only 36.2 percent of the eligible students casting a ballot. In 2013, 1,845 students voted.
Danny Reitsch ’16 and Brad Plunkett ’16 were elected 2016 Class Council president and vice president with 339 and 272 votes, respectively, and Elisabeth Schricker ’17 and Andrew Goldfarb ’17 were elected 2017 Class Council president and vice president with 227 and 32 votes, respectively.
Aaron Cheese ’18, Harrison Perkins ’18 and Toryima Asom ’18 were elected to serve on the 2018 Class Council with 296, 209 and 192 votes, respectively.
In previous years, the sophomore council has had five representatives of different ranks, but the Class of 2018 voted to have three representatives of equal power, Whang said.
In order of the greatest to least number of votes received, Shagun Herur ’16, Jose Rodarte-Canales ’16, Tori Nevel ’16, Rui Zhang ’16, Eliza Ezrapour ’18, Alex Liao ’16, Oliver Edelson ’18 and Jack Sullivan ’18 were elected to the Committee on Standards and the Organizational Adjudication Committee. Ezrapour, Liao, Edelson and Sullivan were all write-in candidates.
Cunningham, who has served as the Student Assembly vice president for the past year, said he is looking forward to getting back to work.
“[Dressel] and I have come up with an awesome platform I think and I’m looking forward to getting back to that office,” he said.
Cunningham added that he is excited for the opportunity, as he is sure that, along with Dressel, the two will be able to make changes during their time in their roles.
Dressel said that she wants to begin working as soon as possible and figure out what components of their platform can be accomplished immediately.
Cunningham also shared how he felt when he received the news of his victory.
“By far, it was one of the greatest experiences ever and it’s going to be one of my best moments at Dartmouth by far,” he said.
Gaba wrote in an email that he is disappointed by the results, but he wishes Cunningham and Dressel the best. He added that he was surpised by the large drop in voter turnout, but attributed this to “campus’s current skepticism of Student Assembly.”
Williams wrote in an email that she is happy to have had the experience of running and is looking forward to seeing what Cunningham and Dressel will be able to accomplish together as a team. She added that she is glad that election did not go uncontested, despite her loss.
In terms of the number of votes she received, Williams wrote she was not surprised by the relatively low percentage she garndered compared to Dressel, both because she was a write-in candidate and because “Julia is a great candidate.”
