SU Elections 2008

RECORD TURNOUT AS LGoS ELECTION RESULTS ANNOUNCED

By Fiona Swinhoe ⋅ April 12, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

On the 7th of March, the results of the University of Liverpool’s Guild elections were announced, seeing Dannie Grufferty elected as President. The other Student Representative Officers elected were Liz Williams, Edward Maloney and Robert Labinski. They were pushed right to the wire by Joss Benson and Abigail Deffee who narrowly missed out.

From the 1st of August, they will take on the full time role of representing the University of Liverpool’s students, working alongside the four elected student trustees; Gemma Jerome, Darran Martin, Rob Parkes and Tom Whelligan-Fell and four non-students on the trustee board, who will provide the indept experience, which has been lacking for a long time.

This year saw 17% of students voting, an improvement on last year of 98%, making this a record turnout in a Liverpool Guild election. This is most probably due to the new internet voting system and polling stations in both the Sydney Jones and Harold Cohen libraries, the Sherrington building, the Management School and at both Carnatic and Greenbank halls of residences.

Seventeen candidates ran for the Representative Officer positions and with only four places the elected candidates have much to be proud of.

It seems the main concerns of voters this year were improving the support offered to societies and various aspects of student funding. Dannie promises to “give greater power and support to societies; thus allowing them to lead the Guild in the right direction. Currently they are not using all the funds they are allocated,” and similarly Liz wants “to ensure the Guild provides modernised and better quality facilities” for all its students.

In addition the winning candidates pledged improvements to funding for struggling students such as Robert’s promise to address “issues such as allocation of Bursary Funds, 22% of which were not used this year” and similarly Liz wants to “ensure students know how to gain the best financial support, a key issue for students struggling to afford the student lifestyle”. Finally Edward is going to strive to “make the Guild profitable”.

LX News asked succesfull candidates what they hoped to achieve in from their year in office. Liz Williams said “The main thing I want to achieve next year is actually making students proud of the Guild and being able to show at the end of the year I have worked with more than 100 per cent effort and to be proud of the work we’ve done as a team”.

Only time will tell if these goals are reached, however for the time being, it seems the University, the Guild and the students have a lot to be optimistic about in the coming year.