At 11:22 p.m. on Jan. 19 the two-week campaign period leading to the elections for the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union (WLUSU) was launched following the All Candidates Meeting.
“This is the first time in the last three years that we didn’t have to re-open nominations for board of directors and I think that’s a good omen,” said Kyle Hocking, chief governing officer (CGO), about the 19 candidates for the students’ union board of directors.
For the role of WLUSU president, four candidates and some of their campaign team members also attended the meeting to be debriefed on election policy. The presidential candidates are Dan La Cute, Aeron Lawrence, Nick Gibson and Matt Park.
Simultaneously running with the WLUSU election will also be the election for the School of Business and Economics Students’ Society (SBESS), representatives for the university’s board of governors (BOG) and university senate and for the Faculty of Science Students’ Association (FSSA).
One of the changes to this year’s election includes the ability for students to vote online on the two election days: Feb. 2 and 3.
“I think we’ll get a lot more voter turnout this year because it’s online,” said Natalee Snell, chief recruiting officer (CRO) for WLUSU. “Students, as soon as they log in to My Laurier through the election days, they’re going to be prompted to vote so hopefully they’re going to take to that.”
WLUSU’s new social media policy pertaining to elections provides necessary guidelines for candidates and their campaign teams conduct online.
“It’s kind of strange because the changes we’ve made in policy were to make the election more open and available to all candidates and adding policy seems to work against that,” Hocking stated, going on to add, “I think the policy we created is a guideline to monitor in terms of all types of social media and make sure that the election is fair and free and open to everybody.”
Announced during the meeting was the official Twitter hash tag for all election-related tweets. For student interested in following election coverage as tweeted by candidates and The Cord, search #WLUSU2011.
Candidates for WLUSU board of directors and president will have to submit a short summary of their platform to the CRO by noon on Jan. 20. Snell stated that she anticipates them being available online for students to read later in the day at www.waterloo.wlusu.com/elections.
Check back at thecord.ca in the evening on Jan. 20 for videos of all the candidates.
The updated candidate list is as follows:
Presidential candidates
Nick Gibson
Aeron Lawrence
Dan La Cute
Matt Park
Board of director candidates
Max Tremaine
Nick Nyhof
Tom Papanastasiou
Bill Papanastasiou
Sunny Chan (acclaimed for Faculty of Science Students’ Association president)
Jenny Solda
Chris Oberle
Alex Reinhart
Ryan Sher
Noah Habtemichael
Luke Dotto
Chris Walker
Scott Fleming
Jon Pryce
Andrew Chudnovsky
Zach Desson
Jonathan Collaton
Adam Warner
Ted Brown
Board of governors
Saad Aslam
Ted Brown
Tom Papanastasiou
Senate
Re-opened nominations for Senate – nominations will close Saturday, Feb. 22.
Saad Aslam (acclaimed)
Chris Oberle (acclaimed)
Cameron McGregor (acclaimed)
SBESS president
Dragana Savic (acclaimed)
Party chairs
Shawn Gallagher
Matthew Rice
Aneesh Lal
Brantford candidates
Ahmed Minhas (acclaimed)
Jordan Ammendolia (acclaimed)
Janell Harris
Cameron McGregor
Trevor Faessler
