Your 2015-2016 SAMRU Executives
The results are in: check out the new student government lineup
This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: your new SAMRU executives have been elected for the upcoming 2015–2016 year. Erik Queenan, unopposed, has been re-elected as President with 723 votes in favour and 163 votes opposed. Zoe Slusar, unopposed, was re-elected as Vice-President Student Life with 756 votes in favour and only 97 votes opposing. David Cloutier was elected unopposed with 753 votes in favour and 121 votes opposed. Finally, Madina Kanayeva won Vice-President External with 519 votes in favour, with Laurie Gaal coming in close behind at 424 votes. In total, over 1,000 students voted, roughly 10 per cent of the student population enrolled at Mount Royal University.
“I feel really excited,” says Kanayeva, “I’m so thankful, I’m so thankful for everyone who helped out on this campaign.” Kanayeva thanked all her supporters and campaign manager, saying she couldn’t have done it without them.
“I couldn’t be happier,” says Kanayeva.
Queenan says, “It’s such a weird feeling realizing it’s already been a year since the last election. I’m so excited to work with these three for the next year. I’ve learned so much over the last year, and I can speak for Zoe as well, we’re more than ready to just come in, tackle this next year and we know that Madina and David are going to do phenomenal jobs and be awesome.”
Slusar laughs, “I’m incredibly grateful for all the people that took the time to vote and said yes for a second year and I think this is going to be a really strong team. I think that with the combination of (Erik and I) experience and the enthusiasm and the passion that these new wonderful individuals are bringing, I think it’s going to hopefully be a really pivotal year for the students’ association.”
Slusar says she is pleased with the voter turnout. “I wanted a thousand and we got over a thousand,” she says. Slusar said that last year they had almost triple the candidates running and this year they had almost half the votes, which in Slusar’s opinion was a good turnout.
Cloutier says, “I’m thrilled. It’s going to be a tough year ahead, of course we will face a lot of challenges but I couldn’t be happier about the team that’s come together. I know that we’re the right people to take them on. I know that Mount Royal is making the right choices and I’m excited. It’s going to be good.”
Kanayeva explains, “I was really nervous. Laurie has been such a great candidate. She’s clearly so strong, clearly so knowledgeable, clearly so smart. Either one of us would have done an amazing job in this position, I know she’s really passionate and I really respect her as a person. It’s too bad that we both can’t win.”
When asked what they planned to bring to the year and what they were excited to bring to the table, they all responded with different answers all geared towards making the campus a better place.
Queenan says that he’s going to continue to advocate for student’s Get Out The Vote campaign in the upcoming federal election in October and is excited for the amount of students that will hit the voting booths.
Slusar voices, “I’m really excited to work on an initiative about: what is your students’ association? I want to do more classroom visits, I want to have more booths on Main Street and I really want to clearly communicate what the students’ association offers to students and have us fully utilizing all of our services.”
Cloutier agrees saying, “I share similar sentiments, I think that this is going to be an important year for really bringing together SAMRU, building all of SAMRU as a team, creating that awareness around what we’re doing and certainly bringing in a student voice into the picture. That’s going to be important to me: how do I get the right feedback and right ideas to drive what I do as the next VP Academic.”
Kanayeva expresses, “Obviously as the VP External, I’m excited to reach out to the external bodies. I really want to work with the other universities as well. My platform was to reach out to business community leaders and that’s really what I want to do. That was not a fake promise, that’s something that I’m really passionate about and that’s why I wanted to run for this. I feel like we can make this happen.”
It looks like it’s going to be an exciting and eventful year with your new SAMRU executives.