Victory for Thibodeau in TCU presidential race

In the first three-way Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidential race in recent memory, junior Joe Thibodeau won the presidency over junior senators Joe Donenfeld and Christie Maciejewski following a curtailed week of heavy campaigning.

“I’m just really honored and humbled for this opportunity,” Thibodeau said. “I look forward to collaborating with many people over the next year and really getting to work in September.”

Nine out of 11 referenda on the ballot also passed in yesterday’s election, making changes to the TCU constitution and the way Senate runs. These included adding the Diversity and Community Affairs (DCA) officer to Senate’s executive board and removing the candidate-raised portion of presidential campaign funds. The two referenda that failed, the seventh and eighth, clarified aspects of the constitution regarding voting and the TCU Treasury.

The voter turnout for the presidential election was 57.5 percent of the student body — 3,006 undergraduates. This was an increase over last year’s 49.79 percent turnout where 2,574 voted. This year, 40 students abstained.

Thibodeau received 1,419 first-place votes, Donenfeld received 960 first-place votes and Maciejewski received 627 first-place votes. The ballots of those who placed Maciejewski as their first choice were then re-distributed among the other two candidates, with 338 votes going to Thibodeau and 219 votes going to Donenfeld. In the end, Thibodeau’s 1,757 votes trumped Donenfeld’s 1,179.

Thibodeau’s platform emphasized his hope to better support diversity on campus. He served as the Senate’s first DCA officer, and he acted as chair of the Culture, Ethnicity & Community Affairs Committee (CECA).

“A lot of my work that I’ve done on this campus, on Senate, has been very collaborative where I’ve reached out to a lot of communities and people,” he said. “I have a deep love for this place and the people that make it up ... I think this reflects that the student body recognizes that there are a lot of different issues on campus. They’re ready for a leader who will bring people to the table, actually foster debate and create substantive change.”

Thibodeau acknowledged his opponents’ accomplishments and was proud of the work they have done to connect different communities on campus.

“It’s been such a pleasure to serve on Senate with them for the past three years when we all came in as freshmen,” he said. “The fact that they both ran successful campaigns is a testament to the hard work they’ve put in and the people they’ve connected with.”

With a strong campaign team, Thibodeau was able to secure the victory despite not being on campus for the election. The “Thibs Gets Tufts” campaign included mass chalking and flyering, a flash mob in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center, a music video and a cardboard picture of the candidate.

“He is abroad in Madrid, but I look around in the group I’m with and there isn’t a better group,” Thibodeau’s campaign manager Rose Mendelsohn, a junior, said. “It speaks volumes to the kind of president he’s going to be that these people gathered in a room to support him while he isn’t here.”

“We are so thankful,” she added. “It makes me really proud of Tufts and so excited to see what he’s going to do with the trust everyone has given him.”

Donenfeld congratulated Thibodeau on his well-run campaign and said he supports him as president.

“Joe is going to do an incredible job. He’s an incredible guy with incredible ideas and an incredible team behind him,” Donenfeld said. “He has my full support. I love the guy. I had different ideas, but I’ve been with Joe since freshman year.”

Despite her loss of the presidency, Maciejewski said that she would still stay on Senate and would consider running for treasurer again, or as a student representative to the Board of Trustees. She thanked her supporters for their encouragement and said she would still work for the initiatives she outlined in her presidential campaign platform.

“The support was incredible, and there were a lot of people that I didn’t know who were behind me who were, and I really appreciate that,” she said. “I’m so glad Joe Thibodeau won -- if there was anyone who won it should have been him, and I believe that 100 percent. I’m really happy for him.”

Elections Commission Public Relations Chair Paige Newman said that there was likely a higher turnout this year than in past years because of the number of candidates.

“We think that the reason why there were so many more people than last year is that there were three candidates rather than two, so that reached out to a lot more people,” Newman, a freshman, said. “What we really liked about this was that more people were able to get engaged in the TCU.”