And the results are in

And the results are in…

The dust has settled, and the results are out.

At the beginning of the month we saw hundreds of campaigners and volunteers engaging thousands of students in one of the real highlights of the year.

Facebook has recently been awash with long statuses of congratulations and celebration, so perhaps it’s now the time for mine, in the form of an elections summary blog.

If its too long, skip to the end to see the results.

A more detailed report on this year’s elections will be produced by elections committee in the coming months, which will be presented at the April Union Council, but for now here are a few thoughts and results.

 

A New Shape for Elections

Timetable:

It all started with the phrase “Elections at SUSU are changing”. In this blog the idea was introduced of pulling the major cross campus elections all into a single 2 week time-frame. After this blog was posted there was a great deal of discussion, and debate, until finally the timetable for this year’s elections was approved by Union Council.

This was a new way of doing things, with a degree of uncertainty, but we ultimately agreed to try this out as an attempt to tackle the growing voter fatigue felt by too many elections across the year, and importantly the worrying decline in the mandate of our Student Leader roles attracting in some cases votes in the single figures. Compared to the thousands of votes Sabbatical officers were receiving this really had to change

https://blogs.unionsouthampton.org/sabbs/2012/08/17/elections-timetable/

Positions:

Alongside this we had conducted a review of our committee structures, which led to a new structure for how we divide up our activity as a Union, and also to how we divide our Sabbatical roles/student officer teams. This new zones structure gave a new way to shape elections. The aim was to develop a culture where people voted for what they cared about, and for what would impact on their experience, rather than encouraging voting for everyone because you can.

https://blogs.unionsouthampton.org/sabbs/2012/11/28/hi-my-names-david-and-im-a-blogaholic

Engagement:

In order to support voters in engaging with far more positions we introduced opportunities for students to having more time to learn about the positions and candidates. The elections were spread across two weeks, one for online campaigning, and one for physical campaigning. Alongside the campaigning and more general marketing we introduced two new systems, eChoice and ePositions. These allowed you to explore which positions you should vote for based on your interests, and which candidates most agreed with your points of view.

 

The Results

This year saw 6046 students participating in the elections, which although lower than last year, we still managed to get 26% of all students voting, which is around 10% above the national average.

For me the most exciting part of these elections was how many more positions people got involved in voting in. Previously people would vote for a few of the Sabbatical positions, with a relatively small number of students voting in the student leader elections.

I’m pleased to say that this year we saw students vote on average in over 8 different positions, which means that students cast over 51,000 votes.

In particular we saw huge increases in the number of students voting for our student leader positions, with roles like JCRs officer moving from a few hundred votes to well over 1500, or faculty officers going from single to treble figures, this outstanding rise in votes is the councillor positions, receiving over 1600 votes.

This years winners were as follows:

Union President – David Gilani

Student Trustees – Andreas Day & Marcus Burton (2 spaces vacant)

VP Democracy & Creative Industries – David Martin

Performing Arts – Laura Ellis

Student Groups – James Hemingway

Surge Radio Station Manager – Jamie Barker

SUSUtv Station Manager – Catherine Darcy

The Edge Editor – Megan Downing

Union Films Cinema Manager – Nick Tinsley

Wessex Scene Editor – Sam Everard

VP Education – David Mondoza-Wolfson

Business & Law – Jack Bridgen

Engineering & Environment – Shruti Verma

Health Sciences – Katy Elliot

Humanities – Lawrence Smith

Medicine – Alex Oldman

Natural & Environmental – Kane Hands

Physical & Applied Sciences – Oli Bills

Social & Human Sciences – Alex Bees

VP Engagement – Claire Gilbert

RAG Officer – Alice Gray

CV Officer – Vacant

 

VP Sports Development – Evan Whyte

Sports Participation Officer – Adam Proudley

AU Officer – Vacant

VP Student Communities – Oli Coles

International – Jawad Bhatti

JCRs – David Gunns

NOC Officer – Henry Pearson

Postgrad Research – Alex Barbu

SGH Officer – Sohaib Rafai

VP Welfare – Rebecca Thomas

Equality & Diversity Officer – Thomas Gleeson

Ethical & Environmental Officer – Charlotte Hollands

Nightline Officer – Laura Mason

 

Councillors – Grace Cameron, Rowanna Baker, Roberto Gregoratti, Adam Proudley, Oli Bills, Samantha Gardiner, Alex Robinson, Emma Miles, Sophie Van Eetvelt

 You can check out all the stats of the Sabbatical Officer elections here.

SUSU Media

After all the hard work that went into the elections period its fitting to include a brief thanks to the student media, and all the volunteers who put in a huge amount of effort to make these some of the best elections that I’ve certainly seen during my time at Southampton.

Below are some links to some of the great articles, shows, and videos which helped bring elections alive whether you were on campus or not, culminating in the fitting grand finale that is elections night live.

SUSUtv: http://www.susu.tv/series/elections-2013/

Wessex Scene: http://www.wessexscene.co.uk/series/elections-results-2013/

                                   http://www.wessexscene.co.uk/series/susu-elections-2013/

SURGE: http://www.surgeradio.co.uk/news

 

The Next few Months

There is a definite excitement in the air for all the new officers, and plenty of big idea, however there is still plenty of work left to do for this year, and I’m looking forward to working with all of this year’s officers to ensure that they are able to leave a lasting impact during their time at SUSU