WGA Election leaves some students out in the cold
Issue date: 2/19/07 Section: News
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The WGA Executive Council vote of 2007 has ended, but not without a helping of controversy. Soon after word that Wharton Forward had won began leaking out among the student body at Pub last Thursday, rumors surfaced that the votes of some students had been discarded. As far as we at the Journal have been able to piece together, approximately 46 students voted who had not paid their WGA dues. These votes were later manually discarded by outgoing council members Steve Fanning, Nisha Thomas and Josh Feinberg as per WGA policy.
The margin of victory this year was narrow, with Wharton Forward winning by 93 votes out of a total of 889 legitimate votes, and 91 out of 935 votes total. In the official email sent by outgoing president Hassan El-Houry, there was no mention of hard numbers or the discarding of votes. We thought it was strange that an official announcement did not include more concrete data. This is Wharton, after all, we want numbers! The sparse announcement only contributed to the election confusion.
All students were allowed to vote in the recent elections, even those who were not official members of the WGA, thereby creating the impression that an illegitimate vote had been accepted. EVP Steve Fanning pointed out that this was due to technical challenges of changing the voting system as well as the fact that all non-paying students were notified by email earlier in the semester as to their status.
Ultimately, we at the Journal don't really care about this fiasco. It's disappointing, for sure, and we think it is unfortunate the way voting was handled, given the fact that students had to hear of the irregularities through an editorial days after the official results are announced. At the end of the day, we are thrilled to be working with Wharton Forward going, um, forward. The fact that the margin of victory was so narrow between the teams, along with the similarity of the election platforms for both slates indicates that the student body has united behind a common set of goals for improving Wharton in the future. Central themes that emerged include GND, transparency and nurturing a more united Wharton community.
We're cognizant of the Journal's responsibility in carrying through these goals and we're more than happy to do our part. We want to help Wharton Forward keep the lines of communication open, and we'll dedicate Journal space to make sure students hear directly from their leaders what's going on. (And we won't be shy about throwing in our own two cents). Maybe we can start working now on overhauling election procedures for next year, publicizing ahead of time what the rules will be, how the results will be published and helping to reach out to the Class of 2009 during pre-term. There is a lot of work to be done…
So let's get started.
* The WGA provided all voting data
The margin of victory this year was narrow, with Wharton Forward winning by 93 votes out of a total of 889 legitimate votes, and 91 out of 935 votes total. In the official email sent by outgoing president Hassan El-Houry, there was no mention of hard numbers or the discarding of votes. We thought it was strange that an official announcement did not include more concrete data. This is Wharton, after all, we want numbers! The sparse announcement only contributed to the election confusion.
All students were allowed to vote in the recent elections, even those who were not official members of the WGA, thereby creating the impression that an illegitimate vote had been accepted. EVP Steve Fanning pointed out that this was due to technical challenges of changing the voting system as well as the fact that all non-paying students were notified by email earlier in the semester as to their status.
Ultimately, we at the Journal don't really care about this fiasco. It's disappointing, for sure, and we think it is unfortunate the way voting was handled, given the fact that students had to hear of the irregularities through an editorial days after the official results are announced. At the end of the day, we are thrilled to be working with Wharton Forward going, um, forward. The fact that the margin of victory was so narrow between the teams, along with the similarity of the election platforms for both slates indicates that the student body has united behind a common set of goals for improving Wharton in the future. Central themes that emerged include GND, transparency and nurturing a more united Wharton community.
We're cognizant of the Journal's responsibility in carrying through these goals and we're more than happy to do our part. We want to help Wharton Forward keep the lines of communication open, and we'll dedicate Journal space to make sure students hear directly from their leaders what's going on. (And we won't be shy about throwing in our own two cents). Maybe we can start working now on overhauling election procedures for next year, publicizing ahead of time what the rules will be, how the results will be published and helping to reach out to the Class of 2009 during pre-term. There is a lot of work to be done…
So let's get started.
* The WGA provided all voting data
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