Current and past FXU presidents celebrate the election results together

 

Last Friday evening saw the results of this year’s FXU presidential elections announced. The four presidents dutifully received the results and take office in of July this year.  

A combined total of 1883 students from Falmouth University and Exeter University’s Cornwall campus voted in this year’s elections. 

From Exeter University, Sajjad Jabarkhel has been elected as president for next year, seeing off fellow candidate Olly Smith by over 400 votes.  

With over 600 votes, this year’s RAD (Raise and Donate) President, Callie Edwards, took the majority of votes to be announced as next year’s FXU Falmouth President.  

Elsewhere, Sarah Redman collected the most votes out of any candidate during the voting process, with over 1300 showing their support for the current Societies Officer, despite her being the only candidate to run for FXU President for Student Experience.  

Finally, Harry Bishop ran another successful campaign to be elected for a second term as FXU President for Community and Welfare. Speaking to Truthfal, Harry said: “I stood because I enjoyed the job I was doing, I want one more year as I have a couple of things I just want to tick off before I just disappear and let someone else take the thrown” 


VIDEO: FXU president for Community and Welfare, Harry Bishop, speaks exclusively to Truthfal on his re-election, plans for the coming year and gives advice for the newly elected presidents.  


Despite the smooth running of this year’s election, the voting numbers were significantly down compared to the number of votes cast in the 2017 elections, where over 1000 more students voted for the candidates who they wanted to represent their voices.  

Ben Rowsell, FXU Student Voice Director said: “There were fewer candidates standing for election this year, 7 compared with 14 last year, which would be a major factor that contributed to a lower voter turnout”. 

The lack of awareness for the FXU elections may have been contributed to by several factors. UCU strikes led many Exeter students away from Campus, however, this does not explain the lack of votes from Falmouth students, with only 14% opting to vote.  

Speaking on the low turnout, Harry Bishop said “FXU have a job and a task to do and that is thinking about [getting people to vote], looking ourselves in the mirror which we do on a daily basis anyway and thinking about our stakeholders, our main stakeholders that is students, and thinking okay what went wrong and what can we do now to improve that”.