March 8, 2019

Students' Union elects Jessica Revington as new president

New SU executive and other officials to be sworn in May 3
The 77th Students' Legislative Council executive, from left: Kevin Dang, Omer Mansoor, Jessica Revington, Sadiya Nazir and Alisha Gordon.

From left: Kevin Dang, Omer Mansoor, Jessica Revington, Sadiya Nazir and Alisha Gordon.

Gene Baines, Students' Union

After weeks of campaigning and candidate forums, undergraduate students at the University of Calgary have elected a new slate of student leaders for 2019-2020. Jessica Revington is the new president-elect, capturing 47 per cent of the votes. Revington is currently the SU’s vice-president, academic. The new vice-president, external will be Sadiya Nazir, who had 76 per cent of the vote. Kevin Dang, this year’s vice-president, operations and finance, was acclaimed as next year’s vice-president, academic. Omer Mansoor won the vice-president, operations and finance position with 52 per cent of the vote and Alisha Gordon will take on the role of vice-president, student life, having also run unopposed.

The two Senate representative positions will be filled by Raquel Jackson and Jonah Secreti, who captured 41 and 30 per cent of the votes respectively. Ananya Ayachit was elected as the Board of Governors representative with 55 per cent of the vote. The positions of Faculty of Social Work representative, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine representative, and one of the Haskayne School of Business representatives remain vacant. Vacant positions are filled during the Students’ Union’s annual by-election in October.

The number of students who voted in this year’s election was 5,671, which is 21.14 per cent of eligible student voters. This is a 3.66 per cent decrease over last year. These results become official on March 15, 2019.

Newly elected officials will be sworn into office on Friday, May 3, 2019 at the annual Students’ Union’s Colour Night ceremony. Over the summer months, this new team of capable young leaders will be engaged in annual planning to take the Students’ Union into the 2019 fall semester.

Other results include:

In a referendum question, 62 per cent of students voted in favour of increasing by 75 cents per semester (for full-time students) the fee collected to support the SU’s Volunteer Services department. Volunteer Services provides volunteer opportunities for more than 400 students each year and runs 11 programs, including the SU Campus Food Bank and the Q Centre.

The Students’ Legislative Council (SLC) also consists of 19 faculty representatives. The number of faculty representatives sitting on SLC corresponds with the number of students in a given faculty. Five faculty representative positions were won through acclamation. The following faculty representatives were elected to serve on the 77th Students’ Legislative Council.

Faculty Representatives, Arts

  • Marley Gillies
  • Justin Gotta
  • Rayane Issa
  • Ayotomiwa Oje

Faculty Representatives, Cumming School of Medicine

  • Amy Beevor-Potts
  • Siavash Zarezadeh

Faculty Representatives, Schulich School of Engineering

  • Keely Lindsay
  • Barney Miao

Faculty Representatives, Science

  • Angie Hu
  • Michael Nguyen
  • Manpreet Sahota

The chief returning officers declared the following students as faculty representatives by acclamation:

Faculty Representative, Haskayne School of Business 

  • Maggie Shortt

Faculty Representative, Kinesiology

  • Mathieu Chin 

Faculty Representative, Law

  • Dalal Souraya

Faculty Representative, Nursing 

  • Candace Cho

Faculty Representative, Werklund School of Education 

  • Georgia East