The Martlet

The UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) current and future Board of Directors saw some changes this past week. A recount changed the composition of the upcoming 2011-2012 Board of Directors, while two new advocacy representatives took seats at the March 28 meeting.

Recount ch-ch-ch-changes

Director-at-Large Gabrielle Sutherland — who finished 12th after the initial director-at-large count, just outside of making it onto the Board — discovered she was actually elected.

“After the counting of voucher ballots all it really did was narrow the gap that I lost by,” she said. “Because I lost by nine ballots I automatically requested a recount. I had no real expectation that anything would change. I kind of just asked because I could. It was quite surprising when the results changed.”

The recount put Sutherland in 10th with 902 votes — two ahead of 11th place candidate Samantha Scott. In the original ballot-counting, some votes were missed from her tally.

“I think the lesson from this whole thing of miscounting ballots — or in my case they counted them but just didn’t add them to the tally sheet — I think this is an object lesson in the importance of moving away from paper ballots,” she said. “It was weird because throughout the afternoon there was conflicting words . . . so it was confusion. I didn’t know what was happening: whether I’d won, whether I’d not won. So I spent a few hours or so quite stressed.”

A referendum conducted simultaneously with the election showed great student support for online elections.

“I originally liked paper ballots, but this means we should definitely move away from that and go to online voting or some kind of electronic voting,” continued Sutherland. “Then there won’t be any mistakes in counting and there won’t be any of that stress in my case of losing and then winning, or in Chris Hacket’s case winning and then finding out he hadn’t won. The results would be right there and there would be no errors and there would be a lot less stress.”

Sutherland, who has sat on the Board for the past two years as the representative for UVic Pride, is happy to now sit on the board in a director-at-large capacity.

“When the final word came that I’d won, and not only won but 10th, it was so cool. I was over the moon. I was stunned, actually. I still don’t really believe it,” she said. “I’m really happy because it means I can try and work with [director of Finance and Operations elect] Dylan Sherlock and get my emergency financial aid system off the road.”

New advocacy reps

Replacing Sutherland as the representative for UVic Pride is Lincoln Welsh, who took his seat on the board March 28. Welsh was elected at Pride’s Semi-Annual General Meeting, and officially joined the Board of Directors through the passing of a ceremonial rainbow baton by Sutherland.

The newly formed Society for Students with Disabilities also elected a representative to the board. This is the first time students with disabilities have had a constituency representative since the board severed ties with Access UVic in August.

New representative Joseph Methot was elected at the Annual General Meeting for the newly formed society on March 25.