Associated Students of Madison's Student Election Commission met Thursday night to announce the results of the fall ASM elections.
UW-Madison first-year students elected freshmen Mario Ademaj, Maxwell John Love, Sam Peters and Jamie Bemis to serve on the 33-member student council. These students will serve a term of one year and will be eligible to run in the general ASM spring elections next year.
The student vote seated four election-winners as first year student representatives on the ASM student council, as well as two new representatives as members of the Student Services Finance Committee.
Student Election Committee Chair Noah Pearce said turnout in the fall ASM elections increased from 5.1 percent in 2008 to nearly 7.2 percent this year. Pearce said he was impressed with the turnout and student participation, citing that the 2009 numbers represented a nearly 50 percent increase in the total ballots cast.
""If you look at the freshman numbers, some of the first year student candidates this year received more ballots than were cast in total during last year's elections,"" he said.
Sophomore Coffey Zhang and freshman Aliyya Terry were elected in the general election to serve two-year terms on the Student Services Finance Committee, the committee of students who allocates funding to UW-Madison student organizations.
The SSFC has taken heat recently from campus groups and student advocates in response to a series of controversial budget cuts to the Campus Women's Center throughout the fall.
Terry said she would try to approach the budget process as an advocate for student needs.
""Student organizations should be judged based upon the level of participation and success of the group's services in whatever they are providing, and students should have an input about the organizations that they feel should receive funding,"" she said. ""It is our responsibility to reach out to students and to find out which organizations are benefiting them so that we can advocate for them.""
