Emma Fuller, the current Associated Students of the University of Portland (ASUP) president, and Megan Meckey, former Pamplin School of Business Senator Megan Meckey, were elected ASUP president and vice president respectively.
The two ran unopposed.
Fuller is optimistic for the upcoming year.
“It's a bit scary because I know all the work that was put in last year and I'm going to have to put that in, if not more in next year, but I'm feeling excited and optimistic as I have a really good idea of what the problems are at UP and I'm already coming in with all these relationships with key stakeholders,” Fuller said.
Fuller’s top priority is continuing to work with and advocate for student-diversity leaders on campus.
“Time and time again, we hear that the student leaders are what makes UP so strong, but that puts so much pressure and burnout on student leaders, which is just unfair,” Fullers said. “So I'm really going to be focusing on trying to work on how we can be sustainable and not have students feel the pressure of being the resources and being the advocates for everything that the school should already have.”
Neither candidates for director of communications, Kianna Storm and Karen Kim, received above 50% of the vote — Storm received 49.88% and Kim 47.48% — due to write-in ballots. As a result, a run-off election for the position March 30-31.
With 72.66% of the vote, Jessica Yoshioka was elected campus program board director. Brooke Majerus, the other candidate for the position, received 25.41% of votes cast.
Graham Finch was elected director of finance. Finch ran unopposed.
Only 14.2% of all eligible voters, a total of 417 people, voted in this year's election, narrowly clearing the 10% threshold of the student body needed to be a valid vote.
This year's turnout was the lowest percentage of the past four years — 20.8% of eligible voters voted in 2021, 18.8 in 2020 and 29.73 voted in 2019.
No pamplin school of business senators were elected. Two candidates who intended to run for the positions opted to run for executive board positions instead.
Below is a complete list of elected senators:
Michael Hauger, Sophomore Class
Kaya Olson, Sophomore Class
Miguel Navarro, Junior Class
Matthew Bensurto, Junior Class
Angela Wipfler, Senior Class
Drew Jones, Senior Class
Nano Munoz Navarro, College of Arts and Sciences
Owen Hendricks, College of Arts and Sciences
William Heyler, School of Education
Tate Harris, School of Nursing
Bea Walker, School of Nursing
Samone Watkins, Shiley School of Engineering
Denver Backus, Shiley School of Engineering
William Seekamp is the News and Managing Editor of The Beacon. He can be reached at Seekamp22@up.edu.
