C&GCU Election results

The City & Guilds College Union executive elections took place last week, with the results announced on Friday evening.

Vivake Bhalla beat off stiff competition from four other candidates to win the race for President after five rounds of counting, with Aku Patel acceding to the position of Vice-President.

Soren Dymond will be Honorary Junior Treasurer, following his surprise victory over Akshay Shah, who seemed assured of victory until a third round count awarded the vast majority of New Election’s reallocated votes to Mr Dymond. Mansoor Ahmed was returned as Entertainments Officer, narrowly achieving the quota to beat his opponent on the first round.

Candidates for the three other C&GCU executive positions were opposed only by New Election, with Hamish Common becoming Guildsheet Editor, Hannah Pearson returning to the executive next year as C&GC Association Representative, and Selina Vinayaga-Pavan elected by the largest majority of any candidates Publicity Officer.

A total of 350 votes were cast at ballot boxes in six departments around the campus, representing roughly a tenth of those eligible to vote and an increase of 27% over the number of votes cast last year. This relatively high turnout comes in the wake of the success of this year’s ICU sabbatical elections, where 17% of the electorate expressed a preference. One concern for students counting the votes was the number of spoilt papers, with around a fifth of the ballot papers filled out incorrectly in some departments.

The present executive were reported to be pleased with the number of people standing for positions, the highest in recent years, and with the number of people voting.

They look forward to an active year for City and Guilds College Union, and invite anyone who is interested in working on the team to get in contact with them via the C&G Office