The sole candidate on the WUSA Presidential ballot in the ongoing general elections, Abdullah Syed, has dropped out of the race. Syed, a second-year Accounting and Financial Management student said, “I dropped out because I found out that [the WUSA Presidency] is a full time dedication and I didn’t want to sacrifice my co-op term.”
With regard to how WUSA will be handling the situation, current WUSA President Benjamin Easton explained, “WUSA Board [of Directors] is meeting this Friday or Saturday to determine a course of action regarding the President vacancy. In general, the new bylaws empower the Vice President to act as President if necessary, and the Board would be expected to take necessary action to support them.”
When asked about WUSA’s plans to hold by-elections in the fall, Easton stated that he could not comment on specific plans until after the Board meets.
Earlier in the race, before the campaign period started, one of the two VP Candidates, Rania Datoo dropped out of the VP race and switched to the Director race. Datoo, a third-year Legal Studies student, explained that she dropped out due to uncertainty regarding whether she was eligible to run for a full-time officer position as an international student.
This leaves only one candidate in the VP race, Stephanie Ye-Mowe, the current WUSA VP Education. Ye-Mowe will be acclaimed to the position.
Two candidates for Director, Irene Choi and Rena Yang, have also dropped out, leaving 15 people in the race — eight from the Faculty of Math, four from Engineering, three from Health and one from Arts (one candidate, Chen Chai, is a software engineering student so he belongs to both the Math and the Engineering Faculty).
Datoo is the only Faculty of Arts student running for Director, so she is guaranteed to win a seat on the board due to the faculty guarantee system in the new governance model.
The faculty guarantee applies only when at least one student from a given faculty runs, which means that there will be no Science or Environment student as a Director on the Board for the coming governing year. This is the first time that WUSA is holding elections under the new governance model. Voting period is currently ongoing till July 28th. Students can cast their vote at vote.wusa.ca.
List of Director Candidates and their Faculties
Angela Souza – Eng
Catherine Dong – Math
Chen Chai – Math/Eng
Daud Khan – Eng
Evan Girardin – Math
Jay Lan – Math
Jeff Zhu – Eng
Karen Nguyen – Health
Karl Zhu – Math
Kunal Sanjiv Karkhanis – Health
Marie Jolicoeur-Becotte – Health
Matthew Nicholas Schwarze – Math
Naman Sood – Math
Rania Datoo – Arts
Sue Liu – Math
