Tufts Daily

Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Annie Wermiel Newly elected TCU President Duncan Pickard celebrates with supporters after his victory in yesterday's election. Pickard won 42 percent of first-choice votes and 56 percent in an instant runoff.

Sophomore Duncan Pickard won the Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidency yesterday, capping a campaign in which he touted his leadership skills and vision for a more unified student body.

"We're going to make some big and important changes on this campus that are really going to improve the lives of students for years to come," Pickard told the Daily shortly after the results came in early this morning.

The former TCU parliamentarian beat Senators C.J. Mourning and Elton Sykes by significant margins.

In the vote, students could choose first and second choices; Pickard won 42 percent of first-choice ballots, Mourning took 32 percent and Sykes netted 26 percent.

Since no candidate won a majority, Sykes was eliminated after coming in last place, and second-choice ballots were factored in for an instant runoff. In this so-called "post-rank" vote, Pickard came away with 56 percent to Mourning's 44 percent.

Pickard said he was eager to work with the Senate's many members next year.

"It's a time full of so much optimism for next year," Pickard said. "Throughout this campaign, all three of us [candidates] really came up with some really powerful ideas, and I can't wait to work with everyone on Senate next year to ... improve the Tufts campus."

Yesterday's voting, which was all done online, was delayed for nine hours after a corrupted computer file from the Student Services WebCenter kept students from accessing their ballots.

"The cause was the file that we generate to coordinate valid voters with Votenet [Tufts' third-party electronic voting platform] became corrupted on our end. This problem did not allow voters to make a seamless jump to Votenet," Andrew Sonnenschein, the associate director of information technology at Student Services, told the Elections Commission (ECOM) in an e-mail.

Mourning, a sophomore, said she was ready to bounce back from the defeat to play an active role on Senate in the future. "I'll be able to do a lot of great things on Senate next year," she said. "It was a great campaign, and I know that next year I'll be able to do great work with Senate ... I know I'll be really involved."

Continued...

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