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In the final stretch of the Student Government Association elections yesterday, candidate Jason Palmer narrowly edged out Guiseppe Nespoli for president.
Palmer walked away with 52 percent of the votes while Nespoli took 48 percent.
Palmer was surprised when he was first notified of the results.
“In all honesty, I was stunned by the results,” he said. “I’m excited and thrilled that the student body has given me the opportunity to serve.”
According to results released by SGA, a total of 864 students voted for the presidential run-off between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Those elected to the SGA executive board last week include Nicole Garcia for vice president, Christian Guerra for treasurer and Elizabeth Elliott for secretary.
Palmer said his top priorities are to increase Pepperdine spirit and spirituality.
He said he also wants to meet and pray with all the candidates who ran in the election.
“I want to be a president who’s always there and accessible,” Palmer said. “If students have an idea, I want them to be able to come up to me anytime.”
Palmer plans on maintaining successful SGA events and expanding upon them.
“I definitely want to have ‘One Love’ again and maybe have it once a month as some students have suggested,” he said.
Palmer expressed the need to work alongside the administration to achieve his goals as well.
“SGA shouldn’t be in a battle with administration,” he said. “I want to make administration see our needs and desires. We can help each other and work well together.”
During his campaign, Palmer had his share of struggles.
“I had a lack of sleep and it was difficult to balance the campaign with being junior class president, Student Advisor of a hall and being in Songfest and Kappa King,” he said.
Another difficulty he faced was ambiguity in the SGA election rules, such as where to hang signs, how to get approval and to what extent he could talk to people about his campaign. Changes need to be made to these rules next year, Palmer said.
SGA vice president-elect Nicole Garcia also observed the obstacles for others in the election. “I have worked with all the candidates on various things and it was hard for me to sit back and watch my friends struggle,” Garcia said. “I am happy that it is over and we can start working on the new year.”
Overall, elections and campaigns ran smoothly, according to current SGA Secretary Stefanie Wissman.
“From the beginning, we set out to make the elections as clean as possible and to go by the standards of the bylaws,” Wissman said. “The people running responded well and we had no major problems.”
While the candidates contributed to a clean election, administration also played a supportive role to SGA.
One change to increase the accountability of this year’s elections from past ones was the presence of someone from the administration or Student Activities at the ballot table all the time, Wissman said.
In last week’s elections for the SGA executive board, class presidents and senators, 30 percent of the student body participated in voting. However, percentages for the election results have not been made public because of a policy stating all candidates must approve releasing the results.
Other winners in the SGA elections are Misty Day for sophomore president, Ryan Bundra for junior president and Annette Payne for senior president.
Elected senior senators are Scott Long, Sarah Granik, Brittney Flores, Sarah Schulman, Jennifer Clay and Laura Sears.
Elected junior senators are Matt Alloway, Jessica Leonard, Ryan Breedyk, Melissa Overbeck, Jessica Kloor and Scott Withycombe.
For the sophomore class, the senators will be Jennifer Akamine, Elizabeth Isabella, Robert Romero, Brooke Coates, Stephanie Nordstrom, Ryan Rush, Leon Dixson and Paula Perrone.
Submitted March 27, 2003
MALIBU, CA
