Student body president race drew little interest

This year’s student body president election drew a historically low voter turnout — only 16.6 percent of undergraduates cast a vote.

Both the general election, with 3,791 votes for president, and the runoff, with only 3,051 votes, represented the lowest numbers in at least 10 years.

Junior Houston Summers won with 1,976 votes, representing only 10.8 percent of undergraduates that, starting April 1, he will represent on the Board of Trustees.

Summers said he is not worried about the low turnout affecting his presidency.

“I think once we begin to build those relationships, word is going to spread,” he said. “We’re going to continue to foster an environment that is inclusive of all sorts of discussions and relationships.”

He said this year’s candidates lacked the big contrasts of those in the 2014 campaigns. The 2014 runoff drew more than double the votes compared to this year’s election.

Both student body president candidates, Summers and Kathryn Walker, stopped campaigning for several days after former basketball coach Dean Smith died and the three students were shot at their off-campus apartment.

“It may have affected voter turnout, but the student body president elections, as important as they may be, mean nothing in the grand scheme of things to student deaths and tragedy of that nature,” Summers said.

Snow and ice canceled classes on Tuesday, the original runoff election date. Alex Piasecki, chairman of the Board of Elections, extended voting to a second day.

“The election took place on a snow day, so we extended it to give people the opportunity to still vote. It’s hard to really get people out and voting when it’s cold out and there’s ice out,” Piasecki said.

The UNC-Duke game Wednesday night was likely a smaller factor, Piasecki said.

“The election ended at 6 p.m., which is a good three hours before the Duke game started, so I don’t really think it affected it as much as the weather and the week off campaigning did before,” he said.

Piasecki said indifference is not an extraordinary problem for student elections.

“Student apathy is always something you have to combat a little bit,” Piasecki said.

Some students said they did not vote because the platforms were not well publicized.

“I didn’t vote just because I didn’t know a whole lot about the candidates. I didn’t feel like I could make an informed decision,” said sophomore Emily Briggs. “The most I’ve heard is a little bit of screaming out here.”

In the general election Feb. 10, 403 students wrote in Zora Neale Hurston for student body president.

The “Kick out the KKK” campaign wants Saunders Hall to be renamed after Hurston, a writer and folklorist who attended a segregated UNC in secret and died in 1960.

“We’ll have conversations with anyone that is willing to do that, as well as many conversations with members of Real Silent Sam, (the Black Student Movement) and (the National Pan-Hellenic Council) to try to build some confidence,” Summers said.

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