In a narrow race, Elijah Levine ’18 and Sen. Annelise Yackow ’18 won the College of William and Mary’s Student Assembly’s presidential and vice presidential races by a margin of 45 votes.
Levine and Yackow took 1,582 votes, or 50.8 percent of the vote. The runners-up, Chairman of the Senate Danny O’Dea ’18 and Nami Srikanth ’19 took 1,537 votes, or 49.2 percent of the vote.
Out of all eligible voters at the College, 3,119 out of 8,386 students participated in the election. Total voter turnout was 36 percent.
“We’re ecstatic,” Levine said. “This day has been long, and tiring in a lot of ways, but reaffirmed the reason that we did this and the vision we see for having a conversation. Conversation is such a big part of today, the ones we’ve been having people walking by, the ones we’ve had with people the last few months … it was about getting people to understand … I don’t have words right now. It’s been about getting people on board. It sounds so groupthink, but it’s always meant listening more and it shows with the new ideas that we brought, I think that the premium on focusing on where people on campus are doing it best, and focusing on those efforts and merging those perspectives.”
Yackow said that for her, winning the vice presidential race reaffirmed her goal of bringing a fresh perspective to SA.
“It’s been about a lot of change,” Yackow said. “It’s been about a lot of fresh perspective, bringing SA down to the ground a little more. I don’t have a lot of words either right now.”
Levine said that over the course of the campaign he learned a lot about the values of work ethic and how to use personal experiences in a beneficial way.
“For me, I always knew the value of work ethic on a very abstract level, you have to want it,” Levine said. “Working smart and hard at the same time is obviously as important. There’s nothing more powerful than inserting yourself and your own experiences where they’re necessary but taking them away where they’re not. And not putting yourself in a position where you’re speaking on something you shouldn’t be speaking on.”
Yackow said that what she had learned is to open her mind to see the perspectives of others.
I have learned a lot about how all of my past shapes me and some of these things are good and some of these things are not as good and how I need to learn to view my perspectives on the world,” Yackow said.
“I have learned a lot about how all of my past shapes me and some of these things are good and some of these things are not as good and how I need to learn to view my perspectives on the world,” Yackow said. “I need to learn to open up my mind to the fact that there are a lot of different places where people are coming from.”
Yackow and Levine said that the first part of their platform they’d like to work on is the People’s Report. Levine also said that he’d like to see Yackow continue the financial reform she has been working on in the SA senate through legislation aiming to reform the Executive Appropriations Committee and the senate finance committee guidelines.
Srikanth said that she hoped the winning pair could learn from current SA President Eboni Brown ’17 and SA Vice President Hannah McKiernan ’17’s administration.
“I think what we learned is the amount of people on this campus that still want to see change and I think that we are still going to work for it,” Srikanth said. “I mean, I wish Elijah and Annelise all the luck and I hope that they can accomplish what they want to and be as successful as Eboni and Hannah I know Eboni and Hannah did an amazing job.”
The three individuals running for re-election in their positions of class president – Class of 2020 President Kelsey Vita ’20, Class of 2019 President Jonah Yesowitz ’19 and Class of 2018 President Laini Boyd ’18 were all running unopposed, and were re-elected.
45 percent of eligible voters in the class of 2018 participated in this year’s election. A total of 2,235 votes were cast for the 2018 senate positions.
Four candidates were running to fill four empty seats in the senate, so all were elected. Returning senators Sen. Alaina Shreves ’18 and Sen. Colleen Heberle ’18 were elected with 576 votes and 584 votes, respectively. New senatorial candidates, William Jackson ’18 and Jack Bowden ’18 earned 539 votes and 536 votes, respectively.
Out of the total vote, Bowden earned 23.98 percent of all voters, Heberle, leading her class, earned 26.13 percent of the vote, Jackson took 24.12 percent of the vote and Shreves took 25.77 percent of the vote.
In the class of 2019, 50 percent of eligible students voted for a total of 2,603 votes for seats in the senate. All four current senators were re-elected. Sen. Brendan Boylan ’19 earned 515 votes, Sen. Shannon Dutchie ’19 earned 599 votes, Sen. Alexis Payne ’19 earned 583 votes and Sen. Sikander Zakriya ’19 earned 535 votes. A senate outsider, Alexander Galas, took 371 votes.
Dutchie, leading her class, earned 23.01 percent of the votes. Payne earned 22.40 percent of the votes, Zakriya earned 20.55 percent of the votes, Boylan earned 19.78 percent of votes and Galas finished with 14.25 percent of the vote.
The class of 2020 also re-elected all current senatorial candidates. Sen. Clare DaBaldo ’20 took 549 votes, Sen. Noah Ferris ’20 took 515 votes, Sen. Sarah MacPhee ’20 took 557 votes and Sen. Ellie Thomas ’20 took 594 votes. John Muchnikoff ’20, who was a new candidate for SA senate, took 402 votes.
Leading the class of 2020 in terms of votes was Thomas, who earned 22.70 percent of the votes, MacPhee took 21.28 percent to the votes, DaBaldo took 20.98 percent of the votes and Ferris took 19.68 percent of the vote. Muchnikoff, who was not elected, earned 15.36 percent of the vote.
