Sean Turner re-elected into first all-male Student Officer team since 1982

Sean Turner has just been re-elected as the 2017-2018 Guild president. He is joined by two more re-elected officers, Ananda Mohan and Oba Akinwale, and new elect Rory Hughes.

Rumours circulated on the night of the election suggested that this was the first all-male team in 5 years at the Guild, which The Tab reported.  According to The Guild website, however, the new group of officers is the first all-male team in the current Guild of Students history (since 1991) and the first all-male team since 1982 during the preceding Guild of Undergraduates existence. The last all-male officer team of Mark Sudgen, Deepankar Dutta, James Wallace and Mark Cawson were elected into office in 1981.

The results on the night left a number of female candidates shocked and upset about the lack of representation for women at the Guild in the coming year.

Sean Turner , moments after winning, said: “I’m just flabbergasted, I’ve never been more nervous in my life. It’s just such a credit to everybody campaigning for me. Phenomenal people. Thank you to everyone who voted for me.”

Oba Akinwale said: “If I had better eyebrows I probably would’ve won the thing.”

Rory Hughes, the only newly elected officer, told The Tab: “Feels amazing. It’s a labour society win on campus. It’s the biggest activist team thats running in the comp and it worked I’m really proud of Labour soc for all this and all the people for helping with the campaign, hopefully we can keep going and keep building.”

Concerns were raised during the results about the lack of female representation for students in the Student Officer team.

Rhiannon Farrell, one of the female candidates running for election last night, said: “Although I wish the new presidents the very best of luck, it saddens me that there is not a single woman president.

“As a woman candidate I am privileged to have the rights we have and of course the freedom to actually run in a political campaign. However, 58% of students are female and 50% of candidates were strong women. Yet there is no female president, for the first time in 35 years! We, as female candidates have not lost. I hope we have paved the way and inspired potential future candidates to get involved.”

Beth Meadows narrowly missed out on office by 26 votes across all preferences.

The final positions are as follows – these are the first preference votes.

First place – Sean Turner (1196 votes)

Second place – Ananda Mohan (1054 votes)

Third place – Oba Akinwale (824 votes)

Fourth place – Rory Hughes (676 votes)

Fifth place – Beth Meadows (607 votes)

Sixth place – Scott Johnston (540 votes)

Seventh place – Grace Farnham (380 votes)

Eighth place – Siobhan Griffiths (350 votes)

Ninth place – Rhiannon Farrell (249 votes)

Tenth place – Alex “Hilly” Hill (176 votes)

11th place – Alaa Jasim (115 votes)

12th place – Noura Qusairy (107 votes)

13th place – Dimitra Psychari (93 votes)

14th place – Donald Turner (39 votes)

Read our live blog of the night here.