URSU by-elections bring new bodies

author: alexa lawlor | staff writer

credit ella mikkola

With some board changes, URSU prepares for the New Year

The voting period for the October 2016 URSU [University of Regina Student’s Union] By-Elections came to a close on Oct. 28, after a voting period delay due to technical difficulties. The original voting period was supposed to be from Oct. 19-Oct. 20, but was delayed until Oct. 27 and Oct. 28. However, despite the change, the results are now in.

As stated on the URSU website, it’s important to note that instead of every student voting for every position, the election by-laws have changed so that now students are only be able to vote for positions in constituencies that apply to them.

In this by-election, there were six positions on the Board of Directors to be voted upon, consisting of Education Director, Fine Arts Director, First Nations University Students’ Director, Science Director, Social Work Director, and Women’s Director. The number of eligible voters varies greatly for each position, but the amount of actual voters for each position sits around the 115 to 130 mark.

The specific numbers are: for Education Director, 1497 eligible voters, and 132 actual voters; for Fine Arts Director, 404 eligible voters, and 124 actual voters; for First Nations University Students’ Director, 590 eligible voters, and 117 actual voters; for Science Director, 1798 eligible voters, and 117 actual voters; for Social Work Director, 1111 eligible voters, and 119 actual; and for Women’s Director, 13812 eligible voters, and 123 actual voters.

As for the candidates, most of them were running unopposed. Only the positions of Education Director and Science Director had more than one candidate, and for those positions, Conor Woolley was elected over Labeeba Malik for Education Director, and Haris Khan was elected over Christie Newton for Science Director.

As for the rest of the positions, Zach Almond was elected as Fine Arts Director, Trevor Dubois was elected as First Nations University Students’ Director, Megan Cousins was elected as Social Work Director, and Khansa Irfan was elected as Women’s Director.

The next set of URSU elections will be for the executive committee, and will take place the third week of March, over the course of a four-day period. This marks a change to URSU’s election process, which came during their recent Annual General Meeting.

Any further information regarding this set of URSU by-elections can be found on URSU’s website, at ursu.ca.