Brennen VanderVeen
Politics Reporter
Michaela Flonard
Apprentice Editor
Whitney House won the SA presidential seat, and Connor Wurth won the vice presidential seat. Grace Doyle will be the next SA secretary, and Mackenzie Smith the next treasurer.
House, elected by a margin of 109 votes, served this year as SA’s vice president. She was part of the United 4 TU ticket.
House has cited legislation raising travel funding for organizations from $1,000 to $3,000 as one of her legislative accomplishments.
In a debate before the election, House said she believes current rules favor organizations that are better established and are more likely to know the attendance to an event. As such, House wants to make it easier for organizations to account for attendance uncertainty.
Wurth, who ran as an independent, was elected vice-president by a small margin of 35 votes. Wurth has been a part of SA Senate for the past three years, where he was chairman of Government Operations Committee (GOC) and Financial Allocations Committee (FAC).
As chairman of the GOC, Wurth wrote legislation that would create a bracket system for organizational funding. This legislation will go into effect next school year and will allow for flexibility in attendance numbers.
Although his role in voting for resolutions is limited as VP, Wurth hopes to research bills before meetings so he can give detailed reports on them. He also plans to attend different committee meetings each week, so he can better know the details of their plans.
Since the VP is a representative to the board of trustees, Wurth hopes to impress upon them the diversity of students in TU and remind the board of the individual needs of students.
Doyle, another member of the United 4 TU ticket, was elected secretary by 123 votes. She has served as the Student Organization Committee (SOC) chair this year, where she chartered 119 clubs. The SOC is currently auditing clubs to create a database of information about the clubs’ functioning.
As secretary, Doyle hopes to publish “snapshots” of the minutes of SA meetings, which would be posted somewhere public on campus. These snapshots would provide information such as resolutions passed. Doyle also plans to work with IT to improve the SA website’s functionality and ease of use.
Smith, who ran with Tavis Phan, was elected treasurer by 115 votes. She has been a part of SA Cabinet for the past three years, where she has served as associate director of athletics and executive director of PR. As director of PR, Smith created an external PR chair to help organizations improve their advertising for events.
As treasurer, Smith hopes to increase the efficiency of spending within SA so more money can go towards clubs. Additionally, she hopes to meet with organizations before events to ensure members know how the allocations process works.
Apart from the executive elections, a constitutional amendment removing gendered language from the SA constitution was also passed.
The constitutional amendment will change the SA constitution so that instances of masculine pronouns also include a feminine pronouns whenever the provision doesn’t relate specifically to men. Basically, “he” would become “he or she” and “his” would become “his or her.”
This amendment passed with 76.1 percent of 805 total votes. A similar measure failed to pass the two-thirds vote requirement in the spring of 2012 when only 64.8 percent favored the change.
