Turnout high for freshman elections

Freshman student government election winners were announced last night after a week of voting. During the brief half-hour meeting, the Nominations and Elections Committee shared the results with the candidates. Roughly 45 percent of the freshman class participated in the online voting. About the same percentage turned out to vote last year, but in 1997 and 1998 only a third of the class voted. "[The high percent] shows huge class participation and gives candidates a lot of weight and responsibility," NEC Chairman Nick Goad said. There were 36 freshmen running for UA positions and nine students running for openings on the Freshman Class Board. College freshman Jason Levy earned the highest number of votes and will assume the role of Freshman Class Board president and UA representative to University Council. "[The win] is pretty overwhelming. I think it will take a while to sit in," Levy said. Six other College freshmen will join Levy as representatives to the UA: Jamie Berg, Kirsten Grubbs, Jennifer Hsu, Tucker Perret, Dominick Romeo and Evan Smith. Wharton freshman Andrew Gomez will also join them. "I am excited to make sure the voice of freshmen are heard because a lot of strong people were elected. We will definitely have a large impact," Grubbs said. College freshmen Taivon McKinney and Meredith Seidel will act as class board vice president and secretary, respectively. And College freshman Gaurav Patel will join the class board as treasurer, along with College freshman Tucker Perret who will be the vice president for corporate sponsorship. Freshmen Dominick Romeo and Jamie Berg will be the class board College representatives. Freshmen Bryan Chao and Andrew Gomez will be the Engineering and Wharton representatives, respectively, to the Freshman Class Board. On Monday night, College freshman Chris Padilla was disqualified from the elections when he failed to turn in his campaign spending form on time. Padilla opted not to appeal the committee's decision. Goad and Vice Chairwoman of Elections Anne Hankey attributed the success of this fall's elections to both the strong cooperation of freshman candidates and the incorporation of technology into the campaign process. "This year's election was atypical in that all candidates were amazingly sharp and on key," said Hankey, a College junior. And Goad, a Wharton senior, noted that this year's efficient elections were due in part to the fact that this fall was the first time freshman votes have been cast online through Penn InTouch.