Students in the Classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022 elected representatives to the Undergraduate Government of Boston College’s Senate—previously known as the Student Assembly—on Thursday. In total, 806 students voted, according to documents released to The Heights by the UGBC Elections Committee (EC): 197 juniors, 246 sophomores, and 363 freshmen.
Each race allowed students to cast as many votes as seats offered in that category, unless not enough candidates ran for the position, according to the EC. If there were not enough candidates in a race, students had as many votes as candidates running.
Kevork Atinizian, Douglas Baker, John Bracher, Ashton Carroll, Brendan Coccio, Leonardo Escobar, and Gabriel Oliss faced off for the five Class of 2022 seats. All seven are students in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences.
Ultimately, Carroll, Baker, Escobar, Bracher, and Atinizian won, although all five won near-equal numbers of votes: Carroll came in with the most at 221, while Atinizian—who received the least votes of the winners—had 206, according to the EC. Coccio received 193 votes, and Oliss received 168. Baker and Escobar, already UGBC senators, retained their seats.
Students from all three classes, regardless of national origin or transfer status, could vote in the races for the international student seat and the transfer student seat, according to the EC.
Jana Shakashir, MCAS ’20, won the race to represent the international student population with about 65 percent of the vote over Anze Podlogar, MCAS ’22, according to the EC. Shakashir won the vote among the Classes of 2020 and 2021 by significant margins—Podlogar received only four fewer votes than Shakashir from the Class of 2022. One hundred twenty-one students, or 15 percent of voters, voted for neither candidate.
Joseph Corsi, Lynch ’20, and Quinn O’Connor, MCAS ’21, competed for the sole transfer student seat. O’Connor triumphed with 61 percent of the 678 who opted to weigh in on the race. One hundred twenty-eight voters did not vote for either candidate, according to the EC.
Not enough candidates ran in the contests for the at-large seats and the Class of 2020 seats. The remaining seats will be filled during special elections in September, according to the EC.
Aidan Mallon, MCAS ’22, and the team of Laura Perrault and John Gehman, both MCAS ’21, took two of the three at-large seats. Perrault and Gehman, like several other teams of candidates running on a single ticket, will each hold the seat for one semester next year while the other studies abroad. Despite voters’ lack of options, Mallon ran slightly behind the Perrault-Gehman ticket across all three classes, the total coming in at 496 votes to 546.
A similar story played out for the Class of 2020—Alex Eishingdrelo, Ashley Stauber, and Michael Zuppone, all MCAS, and Mengru “Crystal” Pu, who is a Lynch student, each received roughly the same number of votes and filled four of the five available seats, according to the EC.
Five sophomores or teams of sophomores ran for the five Class of 2021 seats. Alejandro Perez and Kate Canavan, Dorothy Nugent and Grace Hewitt, and Salvador Norton de Matos and Czar Sepe, all MCAS, will serve as teams. Matthew Holcomb, CSOM, and Michael Lange, MCAS, ran alone and will serve for the full academic year. Every ticket received roughly the same number of votes, according to the EC.
Featured Image by Jonathan Ye / Heights Editor
