After a three-day duel election, the Student Senate welcomed five newly-elected members into its body, Friday, Sept. 22.

From the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 19 to Thursday, Sept. 21, at 6 p.m., freshman students could vote for the freshmen senator election, while sophomores voted between candidates involved in a three-way tie for one of the senate positions during Spring 2017 semester’s elections for this school year.

The official count of the ballots was at 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, and the results of the elections were announced through an email by student services to all Waynesburg University students Friday morning. The students who won the freshman Student Senate elections are Holly Ludvigsen, Danny Booth, Claire Wherthey and Andrew Greta. The sophomore run-off election was won by Mikayla Hagerty.

Before and during the elections, candidates for the Student Senate openings campaigned in dormitories and over lunches and dinners in the cafeteria. This year, there were five candidates for the four freshman Student Senate openings, lending to some competition for the roles.

Dr. Lawrence Stratton, associate professor of Ethics and Constitutional Law and advisor for Student Senate, said the number of candidates there are per year depends on interest.

“Some years, there may be three or four candidates and other years, five or six,” said Stratton.

Most of the planning and work associated with the elections falls to the Vice President of the Student Senate body. This year, sophomore Timothy DeNofrio is the Vice President.

“Being the Executive Vice President, that’s really one of your biggest esponsibilities, overseeing the elections and making sure that they run smoothly,” said DeNofrio.

Nick Cordova, president of Student Senate, said there were many responsibilities that were required for setting up the elections.

“[The Vice President] is responsible for making the petitions… and for creating ballots,” said Cordova. “The Vice President is also officially in charge of scheduling the election, getting senators to volunteer to man the election table and securing class lists.”

DeNofrio scheduled this year’s elections to be over a three-day period to give all students a chance to vote.

“We give a three-day voting period because we know that a lot of students are busy and that schedules don’t always fit,” said DeNofrio, “so we want to make it as long as we could, so that everyone gets the opportunity to go out and vote.”

This year, both Cordova and DeNofrio worked on designing the ballots for the race, and after they were printed, they got the ballot box from the security office. DeNofrio said one fact about this part of setting up for elections that not many people know is that security officers watch as the ballot box is taped shut, to make sure of no tampering with the ballots.

All students are encouraged to vote for candidates of their class in the elections every year—upperclassmen elections in the spring and freshmen elections in the fall.

“It’s very important that we get as many votes as possible, just to make sure the senate body is being represented and that all the students are being represented,” said DeNofrio.