Bennie, Delano Elected UA President, VP
43 Percent of Undergrads Voted; 2012 Class Council Elections Were Closely Contested
Michael A. Bennie ’10 and Margaret K. Delano ’10 were elected Undergraduate Association president and vice-president, respectively, in a landslide victory last week. Bennie and Delano garnered 919 first-place votes, nearly tripling the first-place vote count of runners-up Ryan W. Jackson ’10 and Thomas W. Hay ’10.
Write-in candidates Abdulaziz M. Albahar ’10 and Tewfik R. Cassis ’10 placed third, ahead of the final pair of slated candidates, Benjamin J. Agre ’12 and Raeez Lorgat ’12.
Bennie and Delano will assume their new offices on May 11, at the year’s last Senate meeting.
In an interview with The Tech, Bennie and Delano said one of their goals for next year was to improve communications between students and the UA. In particular, they hope to make it easier for students to provide feedback to the UA and comment on Senate or committee deliberations.
Most class elections for upperclassmen were single-candidate races with foregone conclusions. In the only contested upperclassmen race, Jeffrey Y. Zhou ’10 defeated Brittany N. Russo ’10 to become class secretary.
Elections for the Class of 2012 were more hotly contested. Nathaniel S. Fox ’12 prevailed over incumbent Rishi Dixit ‘12 to become class president. Hannah E. Sparkman ’12 handily beat incumbent Andy D. Kalenderian ’12 in the race for vice president.
The races for publicity chair and social chair were much closer, decided by a handful of votes each.
A total of 1,806 votes were cast for UA president and vice president this year, down from 1,914 total votes last year. Overall, 1,870 students voted in the elections.
See page 12 for a full table of election results and vote tallies.
A previous version of this story ran on the web on Tuesday, March 24. Ramya Sankar contributed to the reporting of this article.