by Michael McCurry
On Friday, December 1, Drew students elected Salma Mahmoud (‘19) and her running mate Shehab Marzouk (‘20) as their new Student Government President and Vice President. With current President, Jared Sutton, graduating in the spring, two candidate pairs stepped up to replace the outgoing two-term executive. As last year’s election was uncontested, this was the first time since 2015 that Drew students had a second option.
With the aforementioned President Sutton graduating, his current Vice President Salma Mahmoud stepped up to run for the Presidency. Mahmoud, a double major in Neuroscience and Spanish, ran alongside VP candidate Shehab Marzouk, a Political Science major and current Student Government Senator for his class.
On the other side of the ballot was Presidential candidate Emmanuel “Manny” Lopez. Lopez was also a senator in Student Government and hoped to take that experience with him to the presidency. Alongside Lopez was his Vice Presidential candidate and best friend, RHA Representative for Haselton, Alessandra Le Pera.
With the final votes tallied, around 368 students voted in this year’s election with Mahmoud and Marzouk taking the victory with 231 votes, which totaled 63 percent. Lopez and La Pera came with slightly more than half that total with 125 votes or 34 percent. The remaining three percent of the vote was cast for write-in candidates.
When asked on Tuesday how she was feeling after the victory, President-Elect Mahmoud said, “I’m very excited to get started and I’m incredibly grateful to be given this opportunity to make a difference for the Drew students.”
Newly elected Vice President Marzouk shared similar feelings, saying “After winning the election I was extremely excited to work with Salma and our cabinet and with the Senate to make the experience for everyone at Drew a great one.”
On the subject of what’s first for their administration, President-Elect Mahmoud plans to immediately deliver on her campaign promises, saying “I think the first thing that I would like to work on is transparency. We want students to know who their senators are, what SG is working on, and how we are advocating for the things that students want to change on campus. We’re going to be actively posting on Facebook, around Drew itself, as well as reviving our Instagram account. I think starting there will really get the other initiatives we have planned set in motion.”
Vice President-Elect Marzouk also stressed transparency but added their administration’s desire to increase school spirit. “I want to work with SAAC to bring more people to sports events and increase school spirit[, and] additionally to work with theater students on increasing school spirit through theater productions and increasing student presence there.”
President Mahmoud and Vice President Marzouk were sworn into office on Sunday, December 3 and will serve out their term until December 2018.
