Current ASSU Vice President Michael Cruz ’12 and Senator Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13 have been elected as next year’s ASSU Executives, defeating Tenzin Seldon ‘12 and Joe Vasquez ’11.
According to ASSU Elections Commissioner Stephen Trusheim ’13, this year’s elections saw “the highest turnout for undergraduates since recorded history.” More than “60 percent of the undergraduate population voted in this year’s elections,” he said.
“We’re very excited to serve Stanford and build on our work,” Cruz said of his recent victory.
For the time being, Cruz and Macgregor-Dennis are gearing up for the transition process. They have begun a dialogue with current ASSU President Angelina Cardona ’11 and current Chief of Staff John Haskell ’12 about this process.
“In the next few days, we’ll be releasing applications for our chief of staff position and with that also our formal agenda,” Cruz said.
Twelve out of the 15 students elected to the ASSU Undergraduate Senate were endorsed by the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC), led by Dan Ashton ’14, who won the most number of votes in the senate election and Rafael Vazquez ‘12, the only incumbent senator to seek reelection.
Cruz & Macgregor-Dennis also received a SOCC endorsement.
The formal turnover for Executive is currently set for Friday, April 22. The Senate is slated to transition Tuesday, April 26.
In the results for advisory measure A, which surveyed students about support for the return of ROTC to Stanford, option A (“I support the return…”) received 2,406 votes — the most votes of the three options. Option C (“I choose to abstain”) received 2,117 votes, and option B (“I oppose the return…”) received 929 votes. The measure does not have any official influence on the Faculty Senate committee’s decision about ROTC’s return to campus, which will be announced later in spring.
“I can’t speak for the ad hoc committee, but I would hope that they view this as an indicator that there is significant support on campus . . . that there’s a place for ROTC on this campus,” said Warner Sallman ’11, who was an organizer for the “yes on A” campaign.
Sallman added that he admired the efforts put forth by the abstention campaign, whose strategy was to urge students not to vote against the measure but rather to select the “I choose to abstain” option when voting.
All undergraduate-only special fees groups passed, with the exception of the Stanford Chaparral and The Claw Magazine, which received 48.48 percent and 49.56 percent approval, respectively. Groups needed at least 50 percent to pass.
Sunday FLiCKS was the only group that failed to pass joint special fees, as 73.71 percent of undergraduate voters approved the fees but only 42.14 percent of graduate voters approved the fees.
Approval of special fees for the Stanford Flipside means that students approved the publication’s allotted budget for a Segway, which Flipside president Jeremy Keeshin ’12 said would help with the publication’s distribution and advertising.
According to Keeshin, the objective of the Flipside’s request was to impart “a funny message of the special fees process.” He said the publication’s special fees approval “probably means that people are voting for verbs that they know, [and] groups that they’ve seen around or like.”
Low graduate student turnout (around 28 percent) made the overall student turnout drop about 6 percent. This trend was also evident in the elections to the Graduate Student Council, where six of the 10 district candidate winners were write-in candidates, some winning with as few as two or three write-in votes.
Current freshmen elected “The Quad,” current sophomores elected “Leland Stanford Juniors” and current juniors elected “Senior Citizens” as class presidents.