By Madelin Shelton —
Some positions in the Student Government Association have not been finalized nearly a month after elections ended on March 9. The announcement of the student body president, executive vice president and academic vice president are pending election-related hearings being presented before the SGA Supreme Court.
Jacquelyn Glesser, the chief justice of the SGA Supreme Court, which is responsible for drafting the SGA election rules and conducting elections, spoke with The Louisville Cardinal about the situation.
She said the academic vice president position is likely to turn into a runoff election after the closure of the election hearings.
The unofficial results for student body president came in with Dorian Brown finishing in first place with 844 votes, Sydney Finley in second place with 791 votes and Afi Tagnedji finishing third with 380 votes.
For executive vice president, Katie Hayden came in first with 856 votes, Valerie Tran came in second with 497 votes, Paighton Brooks finished third with 460 votes and Makayla Streater finished fourth with 162 votes.
For academic vice president, Bryson Sebastian finished first with 579 votes, Kendall Tubbs finished second with 535 votes, Julia Mattingly came in third with 521 votes and Lucas Threlfall came in fourth with 340 votes.
Services vice president, which is the only Top 4 position to have been officially announced, finished with Alex Reynolds in first place with 1,052 votes and Ruby Young in second place with 893 votes.
The unofficial results are being contested by some of the SGA candidates, resulting in the election-related hearings. “We offer all candidates an opportunity after the unofficial results have been given, or even beforehand, to draft what’s known as the violation notification form. These forms will allege certain claims against the other candidates, usually in their own race,” Glesser said.
“They’re offered that time to draw up claims against them based on the SGA GER as well as the SGA Constitution and then the court will decide whether those are frivolous claims or not, and if they are not, then it’s moved to pretrial hearings and moving forward from that point,” she said.
The specific allegations SGA candidates are bringing up against each other is private and not available to the student body at-large. Glesser said this is because of the personal nature of the evidence and the standard practice of holding private hearings, which she said contributes to a fair evaluation of the evidence. For the hearings related to this SGA election cycle, only witnesses, counsel, the petitioners and respondents have been allowed in the room.
The SGA Supreme Court, which consists of six justices including Chief Justice Glesser, will evaluate the evidence and hand down a decision regarding the hearings. As the chief justice, however, Glesser will not be a voting member of the court’s decision. The majority decision of the other five justices will determine the outcome.
The SGA Supreme Court met yesterday to reach an opinion, which will be given to the respective counsel either Tuesday or Wednesday. From there, the SGA Supreme Court decision will potentially become public to the student body by the end of this week.
File Graphic // The Louisville Cardinal
