By a narrow seven-vote margin, Nathan Sgrazzutti is the new president of the University of Regina Students' Union (URSU) following a by-election this week.
Sgrazzutti received 358 votes, while the only other candidate, Tyler Gray, had 351. There were 126 people who abstained. The by-election was being held because of the resignation of Haanim Nur on June 13, 2012.
Sgrazzutti ran against Nur in the last election as part of the UR Innovation slate.
Last week, Sgrazzutti chatted with The Carillon about some of the issues he would like to work on if elected:
"With the budget already being set and everything already being set, things that I'd like to work on are staff relationships, faculty relationships, my standing and the standing of URSU itself – in the community, in the administration, and especially [with] the students," he said.
"Right now, if [the students] know about URSU, they've got not so many nice things to say about it because it didn't go so well in the past, but there are good things that we do, and there are good things they should know about.
"So, I think, taking that six months [as] a building period, and saying, 'Hey, we didn't do well last year, [but] we're going to work up towards it, we're going to get ourselves back on our feet…here we are and here's what we can do.' And a president is exactly what you need for that. A strong president, a strong speaker…[to] represent the decisions that are being made. I'd like to see it be a good, strong building phase… In order to build something great, you need to start slowly."
In a referendum that also took place, students voted to support the theatre department by paying 25 cents per semester, which makes productions free for students. There were 488 students who voted "yes," 272 who voted "no" and 46 who abstained.
However, the theatre departmen has also taken a huge blow with the cutbacks announced today.
Regardless of who won, it is a HUGE upgrade from last year but, to be fair, it doesn't take that much.