Parvatiyar, Peeples win runoff

The Student Government Associaton (SGA) runoff elections for the positions of undergraduate student body president and executive vice president ended with Anu Parvatiyar convincingly defeating Mark Youngblood for the presidency, but less than a hundred votes putting Matt Peeples past George Ray in the vice presidential election.

The runoffs were held between the top two candidates in each of last week's executive elections because no candidate had received a majority of the vote.

The victory by Parvatiyar was a reversal of the finish between the two candidates last week, where Youngblood had 1792 votes to Parvatiyar's 1117. With two fewer candidates in the race for voters to choose from, Parvatiyar was able to raise her vote total to 1944 while Youngblood's total actually fell to 1410.

Peeples was able to maintain the advantage over Ray that he held in last week's election, edging past Ray with 1643 votes to 1549 votes for Ray.

Parvatiyar said she was "shocked" by the results but at the same time eager to get started.

"I had told people this wouldn't really change what I planned to do for the next year, it just changes the way in which I'm going to do it. I'm excited for the work to start and that the campaign is over finally," Parvatiyar said.

"You put yourself out for judgment by 12,500 people and hope that they believe in the same things you do. I'm excited for what the year will bring and for the potential that we have," Parvatiyar said.

Parvatiyar is currently the chief of staff in current undergraduate student body president Alison Graab's executive cabinet. Graab believes having this posistion will help Parvatiyar adjust to her new role.

"She has great experience and I think she'll be able to come in and take over very quickly. I think she will face the challenges that all presidents face in trying to beat the learning curve in the position, and coming in right as finals are about to begin is really difficult too, but I'm sure Anu will do a great job," Graab said.

According to Parvatiyar, her first priority as president will be to fill out her executive board, which includes the positions of Chief of Staff and Vice Presidents of Administrative Affairs, Campus Affairs, Campus Organizations and Finance. She said she will work with Graab to make sure the applications for those positions go out as soon as possible.

Parvatiyar said she encourages anyone interested in an executive board position to apply and that applications will be due Friday, April 27.

"I'm a big believer in making sure you get the right people on board first, so there will have to be a very quick turnaround time on filling those positions," Parvatiyar said.

Peeples, like Parvatiyar, was relieved to finally have the extended campaign come to a close and set his sights on the upcoming year in his new position.

"It feels really great to have it all over with. The race was really close all the way and I want to commend the other candidates for running a good campaign and raising some important issues. I hope to work to implement the PRS system and we still have to do a little bit of work on our Joint Finance Committee policy, since it failed at the last meeting," Peeples said.

The results were announced in the Student Center Commons by Will Welch, elections committee chair and fourth-year International Affairs major, just like last week. However the time was moved up from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in order to not overlap with Vice President Al Gore's speech in the Ferst Center, which ran until approximately 6 p.m.

The results came as a surprise to many who had followed the election as Parvatiyar made up such a large vote deficit. However, with two less candidates in the race she was able to reach a large number of voters who had previously supported one of the other candidates.

Another aspect of note with the run-off elections is the high voter turnout for a second week in a row. The presidential runoff received 3,354 votes, 76 percent of the voter turnout from the initial SGA election last week. Both turnouts were higher than recorded in previous years.

According to Welch, the high voter turnout was a pleasant surprise and was the result of an overall successful campaign and election cycle on campus.