Sarah Zarr and Gene Wilson of campus political party Legendary won the presidential and vice presidential positions during the 2015 Associated Students’ Government election at CSU-Pueblo.
“I am honored and overwhelmed by the support of CSU-Pueblo choosing me and my party as their next ASG,” said Zarr, a junior mass communications major at CSU-Pueblo.
“I am excited to get to serve the student body and be an advocate for the students of CSU-Pueblo,” she said.
All but one member of the new ASG team ran on the Legendary ticket.
“It’s an amazing feeling and I am really excited and looking forward to work now as my passion of working for the students will come true,” said Wilson, who is a junior political science and Spanish major at CSU-Pueblo.
“A lot of campaign work was done to draw students’ attention to let them know that we represent them, not ourselves,” he said.
Shawn King and Erika Retzlaff of the Legendary party won senator positions for the college of education, engineering and professional studies; Chris Barnett and Nicole Hulet won the senator positions for the college of science and math; Rosa Ramos and Ashleigh Hollowell will be senators representing the college of humanities and social sciences and Anthony Ball and Antonio Huerta will represent the Hasan School of Business.
Peter Olayiwola, Jose Lopez, Olivia Rottenborn and Matthew Barrera won the senator at large positions. Barrera is the only candidate from the Students United party who won in this year’s ASG election.
“I was still nervous about the competition as the opposition side did really well with their campaign,” Wilson said. “But our party ended up being a little more diverse than our competition’s.”
Many of the students who ran planned to do so in the months leading up to the election.
“A majority of people who wanted to run knew ahead of time,” said Alexis King, coordinator of Student Engagement and Leadership and ASG assistant at CSU-Pueblo. “Students who wanted to be involved with ASG knew the whole election process as they were already involved on campus.”
The election commissioners involved in this year’s ASG elections were not previously involved in ASG.
“From what I have seen in past, the commissioners are those students who are not involved in ASG, which makes the process fair,” said Gena Alfonso, director of Student Engagement and Leadership and advisor for the ASG.
“But ASG selects the commissioner,” she said.
The process of electing the chair for this year’s ASG election commission was a little different than that of other years.
“ASG advertises the position of the chair of election commissioners and the president and the vice president then picks the best candidate, who has to be approved by the senate,” Alfonso said.
Ashley Kushner was elected as the election commission chair by the current ASG president and vice president Timothy Zercher and Mario Ruiz.
“I think I benefitted most from this position and was able to get more involved with CSU-Pueblo and ASG,” Kushner said. “And as far as the election this year is considered, I think it went well and even the debate had a great turnout.”
The coming year in ASG will have some differences in terms of the senate positions.
“The position of the speaker is removed and next year vice president of ASG will be performing the duties of the speaker,” Wilson said.
