With polls closing at midnight Wednesday night, Temple Student Government senatorial and executive office elections came to an end, leaving the candidates to sweat out the day in anticipation.
Meetings in the TSG office, Student Center room 244, the tickets nervously gathered to hear the results at roughly 4 p.m yesterday.
Representatives from the three tickets, present along with the Elections Commission, paced around the office, nervously awaiting the arrival of Elections Commissioner LaCole Foots.
As Foots stepped into the room, a silence fell upon the crowd as she began to speak.
First listing the names of the winning senatorial positions, Foots then announced the number of votes for each ticket, starting with TU 360.
According to the final tally, the votes were as follows: TU 360 – 605 votes, Owls United – 977 votes and BreakThru TU – 1,345 votes.
After hearing the results, there was an obvious mixture of emotions present in the room – disappointment for the losing tickets and victory for BreakThru TU and its team.
Despite the elections officially ending, all tickets were requested to once again meet at 6 p.m. for a Supreme Court hearing regarding more violations, which were filed over the past few days.
The whole Owls United slate was present and president-elect Natalie Ramos-Castillo and vice president of services-elect Alex Shelow represented BreakThru TU, but the candidates from ticket TU 360 were a no-show.
In total, 15 violations were filed with the TSG Supreme Court, and, like the last meeting for the same purpose, three justices were present, meaning that any fees were simply recommendations for the commission to recommend for the guilty tickets.
The first alleged violation, filed against Owls United, was withdrawn by Senator for the College of Education Monica Rindfleisch, who filed it originally.
Shelow then followed Rindfleisch’s first action, requesting that all his filed alleged violations be withdrawn.
Rindfleisch’s second filed alleged violation, against TU 360 for fliers being posted without stamped approval, resulted in a recommendation that a $30 fee be required of the non-appearing ticket.
With BreakThru TU withdrawing the remaining alleged violations filed by its candidates, a number of violations against the newly elected ticket filed by TU 360 were in question.
Giving the ticket-elect a chance to defend its actions that the alleged violations accused them of, the justices concluded by finding BreakThru TU guilty of one violation.
The violation, which consisted of covering TU 360 fliers with their own fliers, was also assessed a recommended $30 violation fee.
At the end of the hearing, despite the violations in question, Ramos-Castillo and Shelow left the meeting fresh off of a campaign season, facing the upcoming weeks of preparation for their new executive office positions.
Angelo Fichera can be reached at afichera@temple.edu.
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