March 9, 2020

Students' Union elects Frank Finley as new president

New SU executive and other elected officials to be sworn in May 1

Frank Finley is the 78th president of UCalgary's Students' Union. Gene Baines

After weeks of campaigning and candidate forums, undergraduate students at the University of Calgary have elected a new slate of student leaders for 2020-21. Frank Finley, pictured above, is the new Students’ Union (SU) president-elect, capturing 45 per cent of votes. The new vice-president, external will be Marley Gillies, who received 54 per cent of the vote. With 76 per cent of the vote, Semhar Abraha was elected as next year’s vice-president, academic, and Assad Ali Bik won the vice-president, student life position with 43 per cent of the vote. Mohammad Ali will take on the role of vice-president, operations and finance, having run unopposed.

The two Senate student-at-large representative positions will be filled by Jonah Secreti and Jackson Cooper, who captured 40 and 34 percent of the votes respectively. The positions of Faculty of Social Work Representative and Board of Governors student-at-large representative remain vacant. Vacant positions are filled temporarily by the SU Nominations Committee until a By-Election is held in October.

This year’s election saw 5,863 students vote. This represents 21.9 per cent of eligible student voters, a moderate increase from last year’s turnout of 5,671 (or 21.1 per cent undergraduate students. General election results become official on March 13, 2020.

Newly elected officials will be sworn into office on Friday, May 1, 2020 at the annual SU Colour Night ceremony. Over the summer months, this new team of capable young leaders will be engaged in orientation and annual planning to take the SU into the 2020-21 academic year.

Other results include:

The Students’ Legislative Council (SLC) also consists of 19 faculty representatives. The number of faculty representatives sitting on SLC corresponds with the number of students in a given faculty. Four faculty representative positions were won through acclamation. The following faculty representatives were elected to serve on the 78^th Students’ Legislative Council.