Oh Boy, Here we go again.
The University of Ottawa Students’ Union (UOSU) is currently holding a by-election to fill vacancies on its executive committee and Board of Directors (BOD). Voting is now open with students having received voting information to their university email addresses on Tuesday. Voting will remain open until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday. Students can vote online by accessing the elections portal or in person in the UCU.
All undergraduate students at the University of Ottawa are members of UOSU and thus eligible to vote in union elections.
There are no contested races for any of the UOSU executive positions. There is a candidate for most positions: Anne Hyppolite for communications commissioner; Alex Stratas for advocacy commissioner; and Emilia Bah for student life commissioner.
The operations commissioner role will remain vacant. Deborah Duroseau had initially presented herself as a candidate, but UOSU chief electoral officer Ben Cameron confirmed to the Fulcrum that she had withdrawn her candidacy some time before the election opened.
Only one BOD race is contested; the single seat for the faculty of medicine has two candidates: Jean-Paul Azzi and Xavier Legare. The three vacancies in the faculty of science have three candidates: Moveen Galathure, Ibrahim Ghani, and Ahmed Mohamed. For the Telfer School of Management, Gary Chao is the only candidate for the single vacancy. The faculties of arts, civil law, and education will each have a vacant seat on the board after the by-election.
UOSU by-elections have had consistently low turnout. Last year saw the highest turnout for a UOSU by-election with 7.7 per cent of eligible members casting their votes.
Through the same elections portal, students in the faculty of Health Sciences can vote for their representative on the University’s Senate. The Senate sets academic policy for the university and has one student representative from each faculty.
Coverage of the by-election’s results are to come.
