Student body elects new president, vice president

By Kurt Esposito
Assistant Campus Editor

With less than 10 percent of the student body voting, Brenda Shea and Matt Newton won the Purdue Student Government elections.

Shea, a junior in the School of Liberal Arts, will become the new student body president and Newton, a junior in the Schools of Engineering, will become the new student body vice president.

"I’m just thrilled," said Shea. "We ran a clean campaign and we put in a lot of hard work. A lot of people helped, people we will never be able to thank for all their help."

In front of the steps of Hovde Hall, PSG election secretary Brian Coogan announced the election results Monday evening.

Shea and Newton received 2,693 votes. Their opponents in the election, Damon Hall, a junior in the School of Agriculture who ran for student body president, and Elizabeth Gattman, a sophomore in the School of Nursing who ran for student body vice president, received 937 votes.

A total number of 3,630 students voted in the student body elections — a decrease from the 4,317 students that voted last year.

Jim Vaca, student body president, said he was pleased with the turnout even if it was less than last year.

Vaca said he was also pleased to see the infractions that marred last year’s elections gone from this year’s. He credited Coogan with making the changes to the rules that eliminated the problems from last year.

Newton said, "Each of the two tickets respected each other’s campaign, no fighting, no bickering. There was mutual respect between the two tickets on shared and unshared opinions."

Shea said she is excited and cannot wait to start working on making PSG work better for the students.

Vaca said, "I’m really excited for what PSG can do for the students next year."

Hall said he hopes Shea and Newton will correctly spend the students' money and effectively serve the students.

Shea and Newton will begin their terms at the start of the 2001 fall semester. Shea said they will start preliminary work this semester by conducting interviews for positions in their executive board.

The results are pending ratification by the student Senate. The next Senate meeting is Wednesday night.

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Campus editor: Laura Pelner

Assistant campus editors: Kurt Esposito, Dave Stephens

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