Frida is elected president of Sussex Students’ Union for her second term

After a week of campaigning, the SU officer elections have come to a close with the results announced this evening (March 23) in Falmer House common room. It was here that it was announced to the other candidates and their teams that Frida Gustafsson has been elected as president of the SU for her second term.

Frida won with 1010 votes in the last round of voting against Irati Michel who only managed to get 678.

Frida told The Tab Sussex that she was “grateful” and “excited”. She also went on to say, “I’ve enjoyed doing it for a year and I want to start fighting for a kinder and fairer union and I’ve only just started.”

Alongside the president role, the other elected officer positions were also announced. They are:

Welfare Officer – May Gabriel 

Postgraduation Education Officer – Sarah Mcintosh 

Activities Officer – Becky Doran 

Society and Citizen Officer – Aisling Murray

Undergrad Education Officer – Ella Asheri

It will be the third-year running where the full-time elected officers are all women.

The Tab Sussex spoke to newly elected Undergrad Officer, Ella Asheri, to see how she was feeling. She told us that she was “Thrilled, really excited to impact change”.

Despite their joint campaigning, no candidates from the Red Slate were elected to any officer positions.

The overall voter turnout was 17.9 per cent, taken from the SU’s data. This is an increase from last year by around 0.8 per cent, with only 3,346 of the 18,652 current students voting in this year’s election.

Jon Munro, who ran simply on a campaign of making chips and pints in the SU outlets cheaper managed to secure 4th place with 494 votes in the first round. 2,784 students in total voted for presidents. We spoke to him after the result was announced, he told us he was a little disappointed but he had so much fun on the campaign and that it was a ‘banging’ few weeks.

He also told us it was great to see more people involved in politics and get them voting. He then screamed, “They make take our pints, but they will never take our Frida”.

Jonathon Busby, who was a fellow SU president candidate, told us that he was happy that Frida had won out of all of the other candidates. Busby wanted to make everyone know that this wasn’t over for him and he will try his best to hold Frida to account since he is a second-year student and will be in Sussex for her second term.

More to follow