Humber students will have to go to the polls once again to cast their vote for HSF president of the 2014-15 academic year.
Students voted Wednesday March 26 to overturn the election results that put Shawn Manahan as HSF president.
The election was controversial because although Manahan won with 1,051 votes incumbent president Tim Brilhante had 2,400 before disqualified midway through the voting process.
‘‘It sucks. It’s a huge loss for the students. It sucks that (Wednesday) there was a lot of uninformed students that were going on what Tim told them,’’ Manahan says.
Manahan’s win was overturned by a one-vote majority (89-90).
Brilhante says the result of the vote was ‘‘overwhelming’’ and that his camp had fought for democracy, according to Humber Et Cetera.
Brilhante did not return Skedline.com’s request for an interview.
A by-election will likely be held in September. The new election will cost between $70-80,000, says Colin Edwards-Crewe, the Vice-President of Student Life at the Lakeshore campus. He bases his numbers on the budget for this year’s election, which was around $100,000.
‘‘You still going to have to pay all the part-time staff to be at all the polling stations at all the campuses,’’ says Edwards-Crewe.
Skedline.com contacted HSF’s finance and operations officer, Frank Rizzi, to ask about the financial impacts of the upcoming by-election without results.
The vote mean the HSF will be without a president over the summer.
Manahan says this will impact student advocacy.
‘‘There’s going to be no full-time student advocacy over the summer because the president connects with HSF and Humber stakeholders,’’ says Manahan. ‘‘The president sits on Humber committees to discuss things that directly influence the students and without the president there to represent the students it’s basically just going to be Humber making decisions on what they think is best without any student voice there.’’
However, Manahan has his eyes set on September.
‘‘I’m going to run again and I’m going to make sure I win again,’’ says Manahan.
In the by-election he might once again face Brilhante as he could be eligible to run despite being disqualified in the last election.
‘‘I would assume he is,’’ says Edwards-Crewe.
Adam Jonsson
Adam is a fourth year journalism student and freelance writer. He moved to Toronto from Sweden in 2011. Adam has also lived in New Zealand where his reporting on the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011 was picked up by Swedish media. Adam is a soccer and hockey fan and has a big interest in politics.
