While the results of this week's Daily Pennsylvanian survey on student government basics showed that the freshman running for Undergraduate Assembly still have a lot of learning to do, the election results were finally revealed last night.
Last night, the Nominations and Elections Committee announced the eight victorious freshman -- none of whom passed this week's quiz -- as well as the outcome of elections for the freshman class boards.
The freshman who won the coveted position of class president, Matt Klapper, said he was surprised and felt very lucky to have won.
"I was going up against 12 other candidates who were all great," the College freshman said, still in a state of shock and excitement. Klapper attributed his victory to his friends.
"I really owe my win to them," he said. "They did a lot of work on my behalf."
College freshman Jordan Dubnow earned the highest number of votes for UA representative and will therefore fill a UA seat on University Council.
Four other College freshmen will join Dubnow as UA representatives: Jennifer Choi, Jason Levine, Klair Spiller and Ricky Berrin. Debdeep Maji and Hal Schwartzstein, both Engineering freshmen, are the other new members of the UA.
"I'm really excited about the winners," said Nominations and Elections Committee Chairwoman Anne Hankey, a College senior. "I think they're going to be great. Everything with this election has gone very smoothly and people have gotten really into it."
Engineering freshman Greg "Tiddy" Tidwell will serve as class board vice president. College freshmen Brynna Deaver, Caroline Gordon and Justin Roberts will also serve on the class board as treasurer, secretary and vice president for corporate sponsorship, respectively.
This year's election received the highest voter turnout in recent history with 52 percent of the freshman class voting online on PennInTouch. Last year's turnout was 45 percent and in 1997 and 1998 only a third of the class voted.
"I'm thrilled with the high voter turnout from the freshman class," UA Chairwoman Dana Hork said. "It shows that the candidates had an overwhelming enthusiasm during their campaigns and the freshman class was very responsive to the candidates' efforts."
With 67 candidates running for the two branches of student government, this year's elections were the most competitive; 39 were running for eight seats on the UA and 13 males were running for class president.
As NEC Vice Chairwoman of Freshman Elections Melissa LaVigne read through the names of the winners, the candidates responded with polite applause at first. But as LaVigne neared the end of the list, they began to show more emotion, some leaping across the row to give high fives, others screaming their approval.
But for some, the night did not bring reasons to jump for joy. The candidates who lost tried to look on the bright side, some saying they were just glad elections were over and the stress had been removed.
In general, most dealt well with the disappointment.
"You don't have to be elected to make a difference," Engineering freshman Sukhesh Miryala said after he found out he did not win the position of Engineering representative on the class board. "If I have a concern or a project in mind, I can suggest it to my representative. I can still do what I plan to for this University."
Freshman Hal Schwartzstein will be the Engineering representative to the Class Board and freshman Ian Glastein will serve as Wharton representative.
Freshmen Will McKleroy and Samantha Cooperman will be the class board College representatives. And freshman Caroline Canty will act as the Nursing representative on the class board.
Although the meeting was open to the entire student body, the audience only drew about 70 people, and of those, approximately 20 were members of the NEC and the UA. Not even all of the winners were present.
"It's just another symptom of the problem on this campus of apathy," LaVigne said. "I think a lot of people don't even know they can come to these events -- like the one tonight."
Hankey added that the purpose of the meeting is not to announce election results, which freshmen can find on-line or through friends who ran for a position.
"The only reason this meeting matters is if there's a violation," Hankey said.
This year's election is the third one in a row to have no violations. None of the candidates were disqualified.
