Akosua Achampong and Tt King, both MCAS ’18, have won this year’s race for Undergraduate Government of Boston College president and executive vice president. They will hold the offices for the 2017-18 school year.
Achampong and King received 1,676 votes. Raymond Mancini and Matt Batsinelas, both CSOM ’19, placed second with 450 votes, while Dan Wu and Jack Kelly, both MCAS ’18, placed third with 305 votes.
2,431 total votes were counted this year, down slightly from 2,592 last year and 3,411 in 2015.
The Elections Committee said in an email that Achampong’s and Mancini’s teams had both received penalties for misconduct, leading to some votes being deducted from both teams. Mancini and Batsinelas’s right to campaign on Newton was revoked due to negative campaigning on social media. They were also docked 50 votes for negative campaigning on social media. Achampong and King were docked 109 votes due to the use of a BC Listserv, and another 50 votes due to an endorsement received by a registered student organization.
Achampong is the current chair of the AHANA Leadership Council in UGBC, and King, who works in the Women’s Center in addition to several other commitments on campus, has never been directly involved in UGBC before. Their campaign platform highlighted five main points: student experience, health and wellness, intersectional community, transparency, campus improvements and sustainability.
Their win follows a shortened but packed UGBC election schedule. Last year’s election dragged on as multiple teams dropped out and the nomination deadline was extended. This year, the Elections Committee made a conscious effort to shorten the election, sticking to a 12-day schedule.
It started out with an initial nomination deadline on Feb. 3, when Mancini and Batsinelas were the only team to get in the election. Citing a need to make the election competitive, the EC decided to extend the deadline a week, without altering its schedule, and Achampong and King, Wu and Kelly, and Davis Pollino, CSOM ’19, and Sebastian Biber, MCAS ’19, all jumped in. Pollino and Biber dropped out last week after deciding to support the Achampong-King campaign and run next year.
Mancini and Batsinelas built their campaign around the idea that UGBC is ineffective and inefficient, which included criticisms of the way its budget is allocated. Wu and Kelly advocated for UGBC to focus on technology and developing apps to improve student life.
Featured Image by Julia Hopkins / Heights Editor
Congratulations ladies! I hope you have a successful year of leadership and student activism.