BecomingTU will represent the student body in Temple Student Government as the 2019-20 executive team. The top three leaders will all be women, a first in TSG’s history.
BecomingTU won about 55 percent of students’ votes with 1,517 total, while their lone opponent RiseTU received 1,238 votes or nearly 45 percent. A total 2,755 votes were casted on Tuesday and Wednesday, a 8.42 percent student turnout for the Executive Branch election.
This year’s turnout was more than 1,700 votes short of last year’s.
BecomingTU reacted to the victory on Twitter, thanking voters and writing that the team is “excited to serve the entire Temple student body.”
Sophomore political science major Francesca Capozzi will serve as student body president. Junior political science major Kaya Jones will be the vice president of external affairs and sophomore health professions major Laryssa Banks as vice president of services to complete the all-women executive team.
While there have been numerous female student body presidents in the past, BecomingTU is the first all-female campaign to run and win an executive board election, wrote Phillip Smith, the director of Student Activities and TSG’s adviser, in an email to The Temple News.
“We wanted to show people that no matter how you identify, gender, race, any part of your identity, anyone can be a leader,” Capozzi said. “What determines your ability to be a leader are your abilities and your talents and passions and work ethic.”
RiseTU posted on their official campaign Instagram thanking students for their support, and acknowledged the work put in by their campaign members.
BecomingTU’s victory comes on the heels of a technical bug that affected nearly 170 votes during early morning voting on Tuesday. Senior Associate Dean of Students Chris Carey emailed the affected students on Tuesday, encouraging them to resubmit their votes, he said.
Twenty votes were never recasted, Carey told The Temple News on Thursday.
On Wednesday, TSG’s Ethics Board suspended both teams from further campaigning for several violations that involved current TSG administration members using their positions to advertise for their respective candidate teams.
RiseTU received their first warning on Tuesday after Kenya Overton, the team’s deputy campaign strategist, advocated for the team in an official Parliament group chat. Candidates are not permitted to use official TSG channels to advertise their campaigns, according to Elections Code.
It was then announced that RiseTU received a second violation for missing a mandatory meeting with Morrease Leftwich, chief judge of TSG’s Ethics Board, on Wednesday morning.
BecomingTU also received two violations. The first was for posting an Instagram photo of Kaya Jones, the vice president of external affairs, at a TSG town hall meeting with BecomingTU’s campaign account tagged on March 25.
The second involved a BecomingTU campaign member removing Alex Rosenberg’s name from TSG’s official site on March 20. Rosenberg is junior class representative in Parliament and was RiseTU’s candidate for vice president of external affairs.
“Both teams being suspended did, unfortunately, have an effect on that voter turnout,” Capozzi said.
“[The suspensions] hit Temple Student Government’s credibility, so we want to make sure that credibility is built up again, and make sure that voting runs smoothly next year,” she added.
RiseTU did not immediately comment on the election results.
Lakota Matson contributed reporting.
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