The Student Government election of 2018 released the results of the winning candidates on Feb. 23, and the number of students who participated were record breaking.
The results placed Brooklyn Boreing, public relations junior as president-elect and Ruben Becerra, finance senior as vice president-elect for the Fall of 2018.
According to the results uploaded to the Student Government webpage, Boreing received 3,754 votes, Elijah Miller received 3,087 votes and Preston Nieves received 192 votes. The Boreing-Becerra executive alliance won the race with a 54 percent margin of victory.
However, these totals equate to just 7,033 out of 38,694 students that attend Texas State voting in Student Government elections. These total makes up only 18.18 percent of the entire student body. Leavening 81.2 percent of students who did not vote, unrepresented.
According to records held from the Student Government advisor Kathryn Weiser, student participation during Student Government election participation has increased over the past years.
“We’ve had a 65 percent increase in student participation,” Weiser said. “It has gone up and down but it depends on how many competitors are running for office, we’ve had years where only one person is running for office and when there’s not competition.”
In 2017 only a total of 4,328 students voted during the elections with a student count of 35,808 then, representative of 11 percent of the student body. In the year 2014 only 1,1019 students voted out of the 33,064 students that were enrolled that year, representative of only three percent of the student body.
Taylor Brimer engineering technology senior who is this years appointed election board chair, says there has been an increase in Student Government voting but the Spring election was not necessary a landslide victory.
“Landslide is a heavy of term, so I wouldn’t call it a landslide, but the victory was by 10 percent more than anybody else,” Brimer said. “Conner won by less votes last year than some of the senators got this year.”
Two-year senator and former presidential candidate Elijah Miller says he would not call the Boreing victory a landslide.
“I wouldn’t call 700 votes at a school with 40,000 students a landslide,” Miller said. “Senators who have regarded this as a landslide attempt to invalidate the efforts of the Miller-Shelvin campaign.”
However, Miller is proud that the student body is appearing more engaged with the Student Government affairs.
“In this election, we had an unprecedented student participation, which is always something to be proud of,” Miller said.
Student Government President-elect, Brooklyn Boreing, thinks otherwise and says she’s proud of her victory as it has made records.
“Number wise, yes it was a landslide, an eight percent, 700 plus (vote) victory is amazing,” Boreing said. “Getting even 1,000 votes is a huge feat in it of itself and I’m proud of the work all the senators and executive alliance candidates did.”
Boering expressed her excitement on becoming the new voice for all the students who are starting to follow Student Government closely and vote.
“This election certainly made records, we have never had this many students vote and we almost beat last year’s the last most voted in election by 50 percent increase,” Boreing said