The Undergraduate Student Government fall elections ended on Friday, with approximately 4 percent of registered undergraduates voting.
Winners took seats on the College of Arts and Sciences Senate and the Executive Council that were left empty since last semester.
‘From the total in the VP of Student Life election, we estimate that 670 students voted this fall,’ the USG website stated. Out of a total of about 16,000 registered undergraduate students, this low voter turnout determined the representatives of the student body.
Aneta Bose, Deborah Machalow and Theresa Geckle are now senators of the College of Arts and Sciences. Catherine Young won the freshman class representative position, with Kate Patestas and Alice Yu representing the sophomore and senior classes, respectively. Keith Tilley won 62 percent of the total votes in the election for Vice President for Student Life.
Tilley, a senior and a political science and philosophy major, is in his first year with the USG. According to Tilley, when he first got involved with the USG, he ‘saw how difficult it was for students to get funding for clubs,’ because he was trying to get funding for the Alternative Spring Break Outreach.
Tilley said that he ‘started meeting more people in USG and started figuring out how it actually operates and figured if I got involved I could make some positive changes.’
As the new vice president for student life, Tilley is supposed to serve on different committees and coordinate with the Dr. Baijent, the vice president of student affairs as well as the Dean Jerrod Stein of the student’s office.
Tilley said that he is the ‘chief programming officer of the USG and one of my main powers is that I have veto power over spending according to the Student Activities Board bylaws.’
According to the Constitution of the Undergraduate Student Government, the vice president of student life must ‘ensure that diversity is reflected in the programs and activities organized under the student activity fee, and that all programs and events are open to the entire student body.’
Tilley wants to work on advertising for the Student Activities Board and get ‘more student input as to what events they want on campus.’ He thinks that there isn’t a lot of variety in Student Activities Board events and not a lot of turnout, ‘especially for big events like Brookfest where there is more than $150,000 allocated.’
Tilley says ‘we need to reach out to students more as to what type of artists they want for Brookfest.
One of the founding members of the Student Advocates, a political party on Stony Brook University campus, Tilley says that one of his goals as the vice president of student affairs will be to ‘try to advocate for students interests in any way possible.’
