Unfit Elections

Fewer than 500 students voted in last week’s Part-Time Officer elections, despite a high-profile publicity campaign designed to get people voting. 

Turnout was so low that the total number of voters was nearly 100 less than the number who voted in The Tab’s recent Fit Brizzle feature.

In a worrying sign for student democracy, this pitifully small number actually represented a 136% increase on the number of voters from the previous year.

Interest levels were so low that nobody even put themselves forward for the positions of Disabled Students Officer and Part-Time/Mature Students Officer, meaning these roles remain vacant.

The Part-time Officers represent specific parts of the student body and their rights within the University. They are unpaid and elected by students with the role lasting one academic year.

Newly elected Women’s Officer, Sorcha Berry-Varley, was the only candidate for the position, yet she still received over 100 votes. She describes her role as to ‘promote, defend and extend the rights of women students’.

Third year Physiology student, Matt Clarke, comments ‘I refuse to believe these people care about their positions any further than putting them on their CV’.

Sorcha dismissed the accusation, stating, ‘I don’t give a f#*k about my CV, I was Falstaff Treasurer last year and that’s not on my CV’.

‘I genuinely want to help, do anything I can. For example all the authors on my tutorial syllabus are male and that shouldn’t be the case’.

As it seems the vast majority of our readers won’t have voted for them, here are the names of the rest of your new student representatives:

Black Minority Ethnic Officer: Stephanie Soyombo
Environment Officer: Anvi Mridul
Ethics Officer: Chryssiana Foroglou
International Students Officer: Sanjana Narang
LGBT Officer: Victoria Au
Widening Participation Officer: Jayam Gupta
Women’s Officer: Sorcha Berry-Varley

Despite the low turnout, The Tab would like to congratulate all candidates who ran for a position regardless of the outcome and wishes the new Part-Time Officers the best of luck.