‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ Frankie Wins Up Hill Battle

Francesca Hill has won the race to be Union President, after an election that was dogged by controversy.

Hill was the runway favourite to win the contest, and her victory means that the Union will be run by women for two successive terms, with Lauren Davidson taking the reins in January.

Union insiders have whispered her name as a potential President for over a year. One member told The Tab that “the fact that she’s drop dead gorgeous probably helps”.

Not everyone agrees though. One JCR officer said: “I’ve seen better looking dead fish.”

Her Facebook ‘likes’ include “Jack Wills brings rahs to the yard, and theyre like, put it on daddy’s card”, the Fit Finder page and a group called “Let do something fun. LOL JK we live in Bedford!”.

The race was given an unusually high profile by the antics of Candian lawyer Gabriel Latner, who was disqualified from the contest last week.

Hill polled 288 votes, but astonishingly Latner managed to get 124 votes despite his disqualification. Christian Gowers came third with 54 votes.

Latner was disqualified after breaking Union rules on campaigning.

He was docked 40% of his votes for speaking to The Tab, before being disqualified for then giving an interview to left-wing Cambridge culture magazine Varsity.

But the decision to disqualify Latner came too late to change the ballot papers, and returning officers had to come up with a system of redistributing votes that left many confused.

“I wouldn’t have voted for Latner if I’d have know the extent of his punishment”, said Jonathan Carr, a Fresher at Emmanuel.

Hill admitted that, “the electoral rules have shown some real issues in the way the union is run”.

“Next term I would like to have a look at how they are formed and maybe have a look at changing them”.

Hill seemed satisfied with the result, saying, “even if we hadn’t docked Gabriel anything at all I still would have won, which I found comforting”.

Christian Gowers, who came third in the race, commented that Latner had at least achieved his aim.

“If you go into the lobby you can see there’s a lot of things nailed to the fucking wall about him”, he told The Tab.

The disqualification also meant some voters were unsatisfied with the choice on polling day. One Union member who wished to remain anonymous said they would have liked “a greater diversity of candidates”.

It was not just the race for President that was caught up in scandal.

Arrash Arya-Yassaee, who ran for Speakers Officer, was accused of breaking campaigning rules by standing up in a Medicine lecture and asking students to vote for him.

He was initially docked votes for the incident, but this decision was overturned after an appeal.

Arya-Yassaee eventually lost out in the race for the position to Albert Beardo.

Hill will take up the office of President in Easter Term 2011, along with the rest of the new Committee.