After nearly three full weeks of campaigning that pitted two tickets against each other at ASU’s West campus, a winner has been announced: Natasha Snider will be the next president of Undergraduate Student Government West.
“I’m really excited,” Snider said after the announcement. “There’s a lot of things that we want to try to look into, and a lot of forward momentum we want to keep going.”
Snider topped her sole opponent, Attillo Leonardi, after securing 57 percent of the vote.
The announcement was delivered by USGW Assistant Elections Commissioner Dylan Zeleny just after 1 p.m. Thursday outside USGW’s offices in the University Center Building on the West campus.
Reading from a piece of paper pulled from of an envelope, Zeleny said that the Snider ticket won 177 votes of the overall total of over 300 votes. The Leonardi ticket won 130 votes.
Snider said she hopes to continue the work she started as USGW's Vice President of Services this year, working with her staff to carry on projects they’ve started this year.
“I’ve been in USG since the second week of freshman year, so I kind of wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t in USG,” Snider said.
“I think it (the election) went stunningly,” Zeleny said. “We increased our turnout from last year by over 50 votes, that was solid. ... We’ve increased it from the highest in the last four years, so that is the highest in the last five years. So, this is great.”
Snider, a forensic and biology sophomore, will be joined next year by running-mates Frank Melgar and Michael Childs as vice president of policy and vice president of services.
“I feel really good, (the campaign) was really fun,” Childs said after the announcement.
He said he felt good about the campaign overall, stressing that he felt both tickets just wanted to do what they thought was best for West campus and its students.
He also said he hopes to work with members of the opposing ticket next year in USGW to make the campus a better place for all students.
BREAKING: The Snider ticket has been selected to lead @ASU_USGW next year, with 57% of the student vote. @statepress
— Christopher Wood (@ChrisWood_311) March 30, 2017
Before the election, Snider spoke highly of ASU West campus’s new bike co-op program, something she said she was proud to help implement.
Her opponent, business data analytics sophomore Attillo Leonardi, was looking to defund the bike co-op as part of plan to help USGW allocate budgetary funds differently.
Leonardi’s ticket also sought to impose stricter membership rules on campus clubs, with a plan to force clubs to meet a minimum attendance requirement in order to receive funding from USGW.
Prior to the announcement, Leonardi was not “too optimistic” about the election results.
“Honestly, we had a pretty weak last day,” Leonardi said, saying that he and his running mates focused on class more than campaigning. “We just couldn’t be there to talk to a lot of people.”
“It was a pretty exciting thing to do,” Leonardi said about the campaign. “We really liked it, we’re invested in it.”
Cassandra Aska, the dean of students at ASU West, congratulated each ticket after the announcement.
“I think our students have done a very good job of setting up what it means, and the importance and value of having an undergraduate student government,” Aska said. “I completely continue to support them and their endeavors and really want to see them to continue to do the things that represent what their peers want on campus and the University.”
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