After a more than 12-hour delay, junior Robert Joseph was elected the next Tufts Community Union (TCU) President, defeating opponent Andrew N???±ez, a junior. Joseph received 1151 votes, or 65 percent of the vote to N???±ez's 35 percent and 627 votes.
"I am literally overjoyed, and just stunned by the love and support and caring of everybody at this school," Joseph said. "I really have to thank everybody on my campaign team, especially Ben Kaplan, my campaign manager, and I am overwhelmed just so much by all the love and support from my friends and everyone on the campaign who helped out. I really owe it to all of them - they kept me sane over the last few months, and they kept me going, and they are a big part of why I ran ... I am so excited to continue working with everyone at the school, to start making positive changes and to start working with students to make strides toward a better school."
One thousand eight hundred and eighty-three students, or 32.5 percent of undergraduates, voted in the election - a significant decrease from last year when there was a 57.5 percent voter turnout rate. While turnout was the highest among freshmen, with 45 percent voting, 36 percent of sophomores, 35 percent of juniors and 24 percent of seniors also cast ballots. In addition to the votes allocated to Joseph and N???±ez, 105 people voted to abstain.
"While we always hope for a higher turnout, the distribution of votes across classes is in line with past elections, and the overall turnout percentage was also in line with past elections and predicted by ECOM based on this particular election," members of the Elections Commission (ECOM) said in a statement released to the Daily.
Despite glitches in the voting system, VoteNet, and a delay in the release of final results, Dan Johnson, the chair of ECOM, said he does not foresee any future issues. Johnson explained that while there were initial concerns that students could have voted twice - once through the online system and once by email - ECOM was able to verify that there was only one vote from each student while maintaining anonymity. ECOM requested that students who emailed in their votes provide their temporary username and password, as well, so as to ensure there were not two votes aligned with those login credentials. ECOM stated that they were satisfied with the results.
"Despite these setbacks, we feel confident in validating the election after conferring with the TCU Judiciary, the TCU Senate, the Office [for] Campus Life, Tech Services and VoteNet," the statement said. "Having a normal distribution of votes through classes and an acceptable total turnout shows that the issues that some students were experiencing were not drastically affecting the outcome of the election."
Joseph said that, while the wait was frustrating, he is relieved that the process is over.
"It was the most anxious, nerve-racking 15 hours, possibly of my life," Joseph said. "Over the past week I've been telling myself, 'At least it will be over on midnight after the elections on Tuesday.' Of course, that proved not to be true, which was very frustrating. Right now, I think I am so incredibly relieved to be done with the campaign."
During the campaign, Joseph had emphasized his history of engaging with relevant student groups who may have been impacted by Senate resolutions. He has worked with the Tufts Transit Coalition in fighting for the University Pass, which would enable students to ride the MBTA for free, and has met with the university's Department of Education to work toward the creation of an education major.
"Tufts is a relatively small campus, so Robert and I made the decision early on to have as many face-to-face conversations with students as possible," Kaplan told the Daily in an email. "Robert spoke with hundreds of students across campus about his platform, his values and his ideas to improve Tufts next year. I credit our victory to the extraordinary work of our campaign team and Robert himself, who made sure to have as many meaningful conversations with voters as possible."
Both campaigns were fairly active on campus with "N???±ez Now" and "Run with Rojo" signs dotting the library steps and campus walkways. While the influence of external factors, including Generic Candidate and the abstain campaign cannot be measured, Joseph was happy that neither campaign resorted to mudslinging.
"What I would like to think is ... we ran an incredibly positive campaign," he said. "We refused to bend to making any attacks or campaigning in any negative way. We really kept it on the positive side."
Johnson agreed that while there were problems with the voting system and external influences, both candidates ran fair campaigns.
"Other than the problems with the voting issues and some problems with Generic Candidate and the abstain campaign, the two campaign staffs themselves did a great job," he said. "They both performed very well at debates. It was a very smooth campaign from both ... staffs. There were no issues with campaign violations."
N???±ez said that he is still mulling his options and will decide in the coming days whether or not he will remain on Senate for the next academic year. He added that he is considering running for Diversity and Community Affairs (DCA) Representative of Senate's Executive Board, a position that is elected in-house.
"I've been in contact with people who have run for president in the past and who haven't made it, and [I am] just getting their experiences and trying to reach out and figure out what they decided to," N???±ez explained. "I am heavily considering running for the DCA position. ... I think that with my very extensive experience with students of color, queer students and the perspective of marginalized students on campus, that that would be a very effective position for me to make sure that the experiences of those students are at the forefront of the conversation of Senate, as they often are not."
While he has not yet made a decision, N???±ez said that the campaign provided him with additional perspective on how the student body views important issues.
"For me particularly, this campaign illuminated how race is still a taboo topic at Tufts and how we are still, as a community, unable to have those conversations that are so crucial and vital to our community," he said. "If I was DCA, my biggest goal would be to make sure that, at the end of the year when I leave, that there are a lot of changes made with regard to how we address issues of trans students, students of color [and] of queer students on this campus."
Regardless of his decision, N???±ez emphasized that he has respect for Joseph and could foresee working together.
"Robert and I had a very amazing partnership throughout this whole campaign," he said. "There was no negativity between us in the whole campaign process, [but] a lot of the negativity came from outside sources. We have a lot of mutual respect for each other, so I don't think we would have a problem at all continuing with that partnership to better our Tufts community."
Joseph, too, emphasized that the campaigns had worked together and said he hopes to work closely with N???±ez next year.
"I hope that he will stay on Senate," Joseph said. "He's an incredibly passionate guy who has some really awesome things he would like to do, and I hope he does stay on Senate."
Although Joseph is officially TCU president, the Senate will hold in-house elections for the committee chairmanships and executive board positions, including vice president, treasurer, parliamentarian, historian and DCA, this coming Sunday. Joseph said he is eager to get started with his new job.
"I will be starting this summer ... and I'll have plenty of time to start meeting with administrators," Joseph said. "I would like to work with student groups before then to try to use their input when I'm meeting with administrators this summer."
