The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) held its fall elections from October 23 to October 25. This was the second round of elections where voting was conducted online, and it resulted in another voter turnout larger than the CCSS usually gets in its elections.
Of 9,431 eligible student voters, 960 voted; during their last elections, the CCSS hit an all-time high of 1,223 voters. Those elections had a referendum question; elections with a referendum often get a higher voter turnout.
“For a regular election, 10 percent is a great turnout,” says CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte. “Going by historical norms, often this election would have only had a few hundred voters. I would almost entirely attribute this to the online voting. Every student who has an email registered with the college received an email inviting them to vote. I think that’s the main cause.”
Mitchell Auger-Langejan was elected as the new CCSS external executive.
“I’ll be advocating for open-access textbooks, because I think that many textbooks for many courses could be provided at a much cheaper cost, or free,” says Auger-Langejan. “That will be my main goal. I also do want to try to advocate for the control of tuition rate hikes. My intent is to make school as affordable and accessible to as many people as possible, considering that, in many ways, it is a necessity to get access to a job market that is very competitive.”
Katelynne Herchak was voted in as the new First Nations director, and Shauna Nedelec is the new off campus director. Joel Satre and Jordan Johnson are now Lansdowne directors and Margarita Saldana, Abhishek Gupta, and Dylan Bystedt are Interurban directors.
Saldana is also the Interurban Education Council student representative; Mitchell Auger-Langejan is the Lansdowne Camosun College Board of Governors student representative.
Look for a full story, with expanded interviews with Auger-Langejan and Turcotte, in our November 1 issue.