Election Breakdown
Jo’Tan Johnson and Johara El-Shahat were elected as the University of Indianapolis Student Government Association’s next president and vice-president, according to an email from Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Rob Williford.
Johnson and El-Shahat received 57% of the vote, according to Williford’s email. Griffin McGee and Colin Seymour’s slate trailed behind them with 23.38% of the vote, then Christopher Hammer and Jose Cheshier received 19.62% of the votes.
“We had a total of 704 votes that were submitted,” Williford said. “Now, one thing to note about that is that so we used a Google form and limited it to UIndy emails, which does mean that faculty and staff had the ability to submit a vote, although I will tell you that if they are a faculty or staff member that doesn’t have a student status, then we did have to disqualify their vote, and there was a total of eight of those votes.”
To participate in the election, students had to enter their ID number. Williford said there were about 60 students that accidentally entered an invalid number, causing some cross-examination among student affairs staff and the SGA election commission. Williford said the election commission consisted of five staff members from around campus.
New changes were implemented for this election due to some issues with the election last year, Williford said. This election marked the first time grievances were allowed to be filed between candidates. Williford said this was to ensure all campaigns were following the rules outlined in their candidate packet as well as not gaining an unfair advantage.
Over 10 grievances were filed, according to Williford, and all were reviewed by the election commission. It was highly encouraged for candidates filing a grievance to submit evidence to coincide with their report. Only two resulted in an outcome, one slate received a written warning and one slate got docked 2% of votes, according to Williford. He did not disclose which slates were affected.
Williford said the deduction affected less than 10 votes. He stressed it did not affect the election outcome. Williford would like to see more potential responses to grievances.
Williford said significant progress has been made in the SGA election process since its first election in 2023, but they are always looking for ways to continue improving.
Johnson and El-Shahat
El-Shahat attributed her and Johnson’s victory in the SGA election to the debate and their experience in SGA. Johnson and El-Shahat also mentioned their charisma and being approachable played a role.
Johnson and El-Shahat said they plan to advocate for the students on a few main issues, including financial assistance, utilities, campus accessibility and parking. They cited feedback from this year as to why they chose the issues they are going to focus on.
“Recently we heard about 800 students are at risk of losing their scholarships,” Johnson said. “That means that there’s going to be over 800 students who will need more financial assistance. Finding ways how we can better support UIndy students financially is a main goal.”
El-Shahat added changing anything with financial aid would be inherently difficult and potentially impossible. However, reorganizing department scholarships can play a role to achieve SGA’s objective for financial aid.
“Let’s say that nursing students have 25 scholarships available within the department, but criminal justice only has three,” El-Shahat said. “Making sure that we’re looking at the places that don’t have a lot of scholarships, and getting it through that we want to make grants.”
Williford told both candidates they typically would only have nine months to accomplish their goals, according to El-Shahat. However, she said they are planning on utilizing the summer to get some of the groundwork done.
Conversations with UIndy Chief of Police Brandon Pate have started about parking for commuter students, Johnson said. Johnson also serves in the cadet program, giving him perspective into campus safety and a direct line of communication between him and Pate.
One way SGA is looking to increase campus engagement is with events, Johnson said. El-Shahat added that along with SGA being advocacy-based, events also play an important role.
“We’re open to feedback in order to improve,” Johnson said. “In order to have an effective student government, you need both negative and positive feedback.”
