Juniors Fahn Darkor and Carrie Nowell were announced as Student Body President and Vice President respectively April 7 at 12:30 p.m. in the Student Union Rotunda.
1,449 votes were cast during the run-off election. Out of those votes, Darkor and Nowell won with 57 percent.
The Student Government Association (SGA) election results were originally planned to be announced March 31. Instead, it was announced that the election had resulted in a run-off election. Although Darkor and Nowell had 43 percent of the votes during that round of voting, a simple majority had not been reached, meaning that no ticket received over 50 percent of the votes.
“We thought it was going to be over, then we had to figure out that we had to campaign for another week. We were already on our last breath,” said Darkor about the run-off. “It was kind of tiring but we really persevered and got all the votes.”
“I think we were just kind of delirious at that point and ready for it to be over,” said Nowell. “But, I know all in all we were excited that we were going to be able to reach out to more students.”
Darkor is a Marketing major from Greensboro, N.C. Darkor was crowned Homecoming Prince in 2015, is Secretary of the Black Student Union, is the Visual Arts Coordinator for New Students and Family Services, and is a member of Collegiate 100.
Nowell is an Organizational Management major from Durham, N.C. She is involved in the University Honors Program, is the club president and co-founder of the Finer Niners Acapella group and serves as the Secretary for Academic Affairs in SGA.
Darkor says once sworn in, his top priority is to look for an executive cabinet that features different individuals that share his and Nowell’s vision for SGA. Nowell added that in order to represent students better, they plan on visiting student organizations where they can get to know more people.
Nowell and Darkor both have backgrounds as Orientation Counselors and expressed their enthusiasm for meeting new students over the summer. “We’re really excited about working with the Dean of Students office, the orientation program, and reaching out to more students, getting more people involved in SGA and just marketing what SGA is,” said Nowell.
In the extra week of campaigning, Darkor said he asked Nowell what they wish they had done differently in their first weeks of campaigning and they decided to reach out to the engineering side of campus.
“We want to be a liaison for all the students, not just the students in the central campus,” explained Darkor.
They also said they continued to reach out to more student organizations and also met with connections they’d already made.
“A lot of it was just re-education and checking back with people,” said Nowell.
Darkor and Nowell’s platform is based on building a stronger sense of community on campus through transparency and inclusion. Their goals include increased communication between the branches within SGA and creating a “Why” Fair, which would be similar to a student organization fest, but also includes academic apartments. The “Why” Fair would give students an opportunity to ask questions about why things are the way they are on campus.