Posted Thursday, April 6, 10:30 p.m.
Updated Friday, April 7, 12:50 a.m.
Juniors Lamar Thorpe and Josh Lasky will be next year’s Student Association president and executive vice president, the Joint Elections Committee announced Thursday night in the Marvin Center.
Thorpe beat junior Morgan Corr for the SA’s top post by 186 votes, while Lasky defeated sophomore Angela Chang for the position of EVP by 439 votes.
“I feel great,” said Thorpe, who had his family present for the announcement, which took place around 10:30 p.m. in a room on the Marvin Center’s fourth floor.
“What a great birthday present – thank you GW,” said Thorpe, who turned 25 Thursday.
Thorpe, who garnered 727 votes in last week’s general election, received the support of some of last week’s presidential candidates including sophomores Nick D’Addario and Elliot Rozenberg. Thorpe won 1,002 votes in this week’s runoff election.
“The voters were informed and made the right decision,” he said. “They were tired of petty politics.”
Corr garnered 816 votes in the runoff and said he would be back next year in the SA, even though he did not win an official position.
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“There will be time for speeches later,” said Corr, who was the top vote-getter in last week’s general election with 904. “We ran the best we could. I could not be happier of the team we put together.”
Lasky, who teamed up with Thorpe after last week’s election, received 1,128 votes in the runoff, compared to his 914 votes in last week’s general election.
“I am looking at all of the people around me, and their smiles light me up,” Lasky said. “The team I worked for made the difference.”
Chang, who finished in second place last week with 844 votes, garnered 689 votes in the runoff. She said the Real GW team, which won 15 of the 21 seats they vied for in last week’s SA and Marvin Center Governing Board elections, will be a significant force in next year’s Senate.
“For the record we still got 11 senators elected,” she said.
“I believe anything good that comes out of the Senate next year will be from Real GW,” said senior Amrita Bagaria, who was the Real GW slate’s campaign manager.
“We played fair and stuck by the issues that were important to us,” she said when asked if the slate could have done anything differently to win.
While last week’s general election recorded a three-year voter turnout high of 3,183 students voting, this week’s runoff election saw only 1,818 students vote.
The newly elected SA representatives from the past two weeks will assume their positions later this month in a swearing-in ceremony.
Last year, Student Association President Audai Shakour, a senior, edged out senior Ben Traverse, who ran on the Coalition for Reform slate by less than 40 votes to win the post.
-Brandon Butler contributed to this report.
