By Kevin Hong

When the posters and advertisements are all around campus, people know the annual SGA campaign season has come.

This year, 10 candidates ran for three positions. Holden Bale ’12 and Gabe Schechter ’12 ran for SGA president. Cyril Afeku ’13, Christopher Dorman ’12, Raghav Malik ’13, Francisco Reveriano ’13 and Avery Rowlison ’13 ran for Vice President of Student Affairs. Jack Menner ’13, Wadzanai Motsi ’12 and Alex White ’12 ran for Vice President of Academic Affairs.

In addition to their private campaigns and posters, candidates spoke at an open forum on Sunday afternoon and hosted a meet-and-greet session on Monday night in Lyle’s Pub.

It turned out that 59.8 percent of campus voted, which made 934 votes. “That’s significantly more than any other elections,” said Liz Maltby ’11, the SGA Administrative Coordinator.

This year, both of the candidates for president are currently on SGA cabinet.

For the Vice President of Academic Affairs, there are two candidates (Motsi and White) who are campaigning from semesters abroad, which is quite unusual. “They have been running their campaigns through friends, and we’ll see how it works out for them,” Maltby said.

The first-round result came out at Wednesday midnight, For the position of SGA President, Holden Bale almost won the election with 442 votes (47.94%), and Gabe Schechter got 371 votes (40.24%). For VPSA, Christopher Dorman led with 291 (32%) and Cyril Afeku got 256 (28%). For VPAA, Jack Menner and Wadzanai Motsi got the most votes with 314 (34.4%) and 297 (32.5%), respectively.
The second round of voting will last 24 hours, until 7:00 a.m. today, Friday, March 4. By the end of the second grievance period, Grinnellians should know the future officials of the SGA.