Lubens Benjamin and Julia Spagnola will be the next president and vice president of UGBC, respectively. The team won 1955 of 3133 votes, or 62.4 percent, in Tuesday’s election.
“We’re ready to start meeting with people right now,” Benjamin said. “I’m so ready to go tomorrow. We’re going to work day in and day out.”
Benjamin, CSOM ’23, and Spagnola, MCAS ’23, beat Kudzai Kapurura, MCAS ’23, and Caleb Wachsmuth, MCAS ’24, winning by a margin of 777 votes.
“It feels absolutely unreal,” said Spagnola, as “The Story of Tonight” from the Hamilton soundtrack played in the background. “We’re ready to work hard everyday. We’re honored.”
The Elections Committee deducted a total of 15 votes from this year’s election.
Kapurura and Wachsmuth lost the 15 votes for “violating endorsement policy.” The team also received a warning and later a 24-hour social media ban for “violating posting policy” with excess posters and lawn signs, according to the Elections Committee.
Benjamin and Spagnola did not lose any votes.
Kapurura tapped Wachsmuth as her new running mate on March 23 after her team’s previous vice presidential candidate withdrew from the election. According to the Elections Committee, a singular candidate has not dropped out of a UGBC presidential election in recent years.
Benjamin and Spagnola campaigned on a platform promising short-term, pragmatic solutions to the issues facing BC students. They outlined four main policy areas: inclusive culture, academic experience, student life, and “institutional UGBC,” or increasing efficiency in UGBC’s structure.
“We want to start tackling student wellness,” Benjamin said. “We want to make sure that students have the resources they need. We want to make sure we can start to change the culture here at BC and they don’t have to fit into a mold and they can just be themselves.”
Their platform also included increasing resources for LGBTQ+ students, improving BC’s bias-related incident reporting system, creating an app with mental health resources, and fostering increased mentorship within Boston College’s academic advising program, among other policy points.
“Hopefully, students will feel that they have a student government that is working as hard as they can for them,” Benjamin said.
Update (4/7/22, 12:50 a.m.): This article was updated to include vote tallies and sanctions from the election.
Featured Image by Steve Mooney / Heights Editor
