Nancy Chu was elected CUSU Mature Students’ Rep in a landslide victory last Friday, with two votes for her and one vote in favour of re-opening nominations.

The election of the Mature Students’ Rep, in which only mature students (defined by CUSU those “matriculated as an undergraduate at age 21 or more, or a postgraduate at age 25 or more”) were asked to vote, saw 3 votes cast in total. The most recent publicly available statistics show that there are in the region of 5,700 mature students at the university.

On these numbers, the election would constitute a turnout of 0.05 per cent of eligible voters.

Speaking to Varsity, Chu said: “I ran for Mature Students’ Rep because of an interest in bringing energy to what I think of as an often-neglected student group in the university. Knowing the poor voter turnout doesn’t make me question my mandate as Rep but I would like to see the CUSU elections be better structured to invite greater student participation.

“It might make me question my ‘representative-ness’ as Rep, however.”
Chu’s email address was not among those listed as having voted – she told Varsity that she did not participate. The Returning Officer confirmed that “candidates did have the opportunity to vote for themselves”.

“It’s true that I did not vote,” said Chu “I’m not sure I have a clear reason. Why vote for yourself? I felt like my part was to run, and I expected that the election would be decided by other voters.”

One of the three voters, speaking to Varsity, said that they “searched around on CUSU’s website and found voting open” after they had “glanced through [the] manifestos quickly”.

Asked whether they were disappointed with the number of people who voted, they said “democracy will die if people don’t participate”.

The simultaneous election from the Part-Time Executive (PTE) saw a total of 221 votes cast, out of a total of 23,371 student voters on the electoral roll – a turnout of 0.95 per cent. This year is the first time that elections for the PTE were opened to all students – previously it has been voted on by CUSU Council. The highest turnout was in the vote for Union Development Team, with a total of 154 votes cast.

The election saw victories for Cornelius Roemer and Umang Khandelwal for the Union Development Team, Danniella Whyte Oshodi and Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar for the Welfare and Rights Team, Eireann Attridge and Rachel Mander for the Access and Funding Team and Marie Nedgine Ducrépin for the Ethical Affairs Team. Only one candidate was not successful in being elected to a position.

Roemer, who promised in his manifesto a “Review of CUSU’s governance, focus and services”, attributed the low turnout to a lack of communication by CUSU, and told Varsity: “The election was only mentioned in one sentence at the bottom of the weekly newsletter…there was no separate email informing students that voting was open and giving a direct link.”

This came among broader criticism of how CUSU is run, with Roemer adding that “it often appears to outsiders that CUSU is inefficient, disorganised and doesn’t get things done” and suggested that “some of the students who knew about the election might also not have voted because they don’t see the point of CUSU apart from causing controversies”.

Asked about the turnout figures, Jemma Stewart – Returning Officer for the elections, and CUSU Coordinator – told Varsity “this was the first year that we opened elections for the CUSU Part-Time Executive to all members of CUSU with a completely new structure, whereas in the past we have held elections voted on by CUSU Council”.

She said that CUSU “will continue to review and improve the process of publicity both around nominations and voting periods. In particular, the low election turnout of the Mature Students’ Representative highlights how we need to improve relationships with and support for mature students – which started last year through the prioritisation of the three representative roles (mature, part time and student parent) with votes on CUSU Council to represent constituents’ views.”

Students were given a notification about the election the day before voting opened, as part of CUSU’s weekly round-up email. The email mentioned the vote, which took place from the 10th-13th November, and provided a link to a page with the candidates’ manifestos. This page did not contain a link to the vote itself. A Facebook event for the Part-Time Executive elections was created by CUSU, with 108 people invited to it, 20 of whom registered themselves as ‘interested’ or ‘going’. CUSU’s main Facebook page itself has 10,275 likes.