DSG senate election results

Sep 20 2011, Written by Andrew Luo in News, 0 Comments

Following a week of heavy campaigning, the freshman DSG senate election results were released late Monday night.

Official polls opened from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday. Students voted for their candidate through DukeGroups after a message was sent to their email inboxes. On the ballot, voters were also given information regarding each candidate’s position and platform. 862 total votes were cast, representing about a half of the freshmen class.

The ten Senator-elects are Leighanne Oh and Max Lipscomb for academic affairs; Tre’Ellis Scott and Michael Washington for student life; Zoe Bulger and Emily Kuo for residential life; Emily Feng and Wendi Oppenheim for athletics; services and the environment and Derek Rhodes; and Bret Lesavoy for Durham and regional affairs.

Although elections have just ended and campaign posters stay hang on bulletin boards across East Campus, senator-elects are already looking ahead to their future term as part of DSG.

“I’m beyond excited—I think my heart jumped out of my chest when I received the phone call.” said Senator-elect Tre’ Ellis Scott, “The next thing is becoming a listener and observer to the system in place with DSG. Duke Student Government is filled with great leaders that I can’t wait to work with.”

The excitement was not limited to candidates. The campaign commotion on East over the past week did not go unnoticed to the upperclassmen on West or to the senior members of DSG.

“I was pleased with the high level of participation from freshmen,” said DSG President Pete Schork, “People were creative with how they campaigned, and all the candidates showed an advanced understanding of DSG through the platforms they ran on.”

As for the freshmen who have just voted in their first college election, needless to say many were thrilled and perhaps even a little overwhelmed.

“It was really interesting seeing new posters spring up in the dorms last week,” said freshman Sanmay Jain. “By the end, I had a really hard time picking candidates because they all seemed so qualified!”

Nevertheless, the DSG doors are not closed for the senate candidates who did not win the race.

“For those who still want to participate in DSG, the best thing to do is to apply through At-Large. There are a lot of positions available,” Schork said. “People with good ideas should definitely still get involved.”