Brooks brings in ballot

New SGA president to be sworn in Tuesday

By Ashley Hopkins, news editor
Posted on October 15, 2007

Senior Lee Brooks, previously the vice president of academic affairs, received 2,353 votes, winning with 50.876 percent of the vote during the runoff election for student body president. Competitor Ilk Ghavami, senator for the College of Math and Science, received 2,272 votes, or 49.124 percent of the vote.

“It’s been one hell of a week,” Brooks said.

The runoff followed a previous voting cycle in which the vote had been 49.833 percent in Ghavami’s favor while Brooks recieved 49.196 percent and the rest went to write-in candidates. During the runoffs no write-ins were allowed.

Brooks will officially be sworn in at Tuesday’s SGA meeting but is already working to get the organization back on track.

“First on the agenda is to get the organization on the same page,” he said.  “If we’re not on the same page we can’t make progress.”

Part of the way Brooks hopes to make progress is by getting the SGA working on a student published pamphlet called “So you think this is a party school: 50 things to do at JMU besides drinking and partying,” one of the main platforms he ran on.  Brooks has started looking into grant funding for the pamphlet, which would be available to prospective students and their families.

While Ghavami may have lost the election, he plans to continue working within the SGA.  He said that his loss will not keep him from working to better the campus and the environment.

“I’m still going to be working on the points that I wanted to and if anyone wants to help, contact me,” he said.  “If I didn’t think [these issues] were important I wouldn’t have talked about them so much.”

Ghavami also said that he was impressed by the voter turnout as it shows people are taking a more active role in their government.  While he said he wished results of the election were in his favor, he said he thinks Brooks will do a great job as president.

“It just goes to show how there’s a divide in the campus,” he said.  “The campus could have went in a completely different direction, but they decided to keep it simple.  There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Students have had mixed reactions regarding the outcome of the election.

“Ilk should have won,” freshman Thomas Grant said.  “I liked his stances better.”

Junior Kim Schaer thought Brooks had a stronger platform and decided to vote for him.

She said, “He just seemed like the better candidate.”