Students’ union election season begins

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