Halligan, Webb win SGA election

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Julie Balzarini

Juniors Bridget Halligan and Allison Webb won the positions of student body president and vice president, respectively, for the 2010-’11 academic year.

Current Student Government Association Adviser Tom Mogan believes this is the first time an       all-female ticket has won.

The Halligan and Webb ticket claimed 51.5 percent of the vote, giving them the majority required to win the election.

The pair ran against two other tickets. Juniors Craig Durrant and Tom Murphy received 39.6 percent of the vote, while William Hebard and John Dunham received 8.9 percent. 

A total of 2,918 students voted, up from 2,720 last year.

“One of our goals going into this was to increase voter turnout and awareness of Student Government in general,” Halligan said. “We were out at the Oreo at 8 a.m. We wanted to remind students that there were several hours of voting left. We believe that every vote counts.” 

The results were announced at 2:30 p.m. at the Oreo yesterday by current Student Body President and Vice President Dan Gelwicks and Spencer Curtis. 

The election results were scheduled to be announced at 12:30 p.m.,  but voting was extended until 2:25 p.m. after the online voting system experienced a temporary outage. 

 “We believe that even more students would have voted but were discouraged when they went to the Web site and there were problems with voting,” Webb said. “Thankfully UNIT was able to get the link back up later in the day.”

The duo and their team scattered around campus to tell people that they could still vote.

“We went back out as soon as the link was fixed,” Webb said.

Upon the announcement, Halligan and Webb celebrated with many students who had supported them throughout their campaign. 

The first thing they did was gather their team on the steps of Dougherty to thank them for their hard work and support. They attributed their win to the dedication of their campaign team.

Many students wore yellow     T-shirts reading “Vote Bridget and Allison” in the days leading up to the election in a show of support for Halligan and Webb. 

“Apparently people around campus were referring to our team as ‘The Army of Yellow,'” Webb said.

They hope to implement an off-campus housing Web site soon, so that students can begin using it in the fall.

They also hope to implement a peer-advising system in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences before registration for Spring 2011.

These are a few of the points on their platform, all of which they have already researched and discussed with the appropriate administrators.

Halligan and Webb have experience with SGA and have both been involved since their freshman year. Webb was the assistant chair for the Student Concerns and Issues Committee sophomore year. She is currently the chair of the Dining Services Committee, and Halligan is the chair of the Student Ideas and Solutions Committee.

Halligan and Webb will take the place of Dan Gelwicks and Spencer Curtis, who hold the positions of student body president and vice president, respectively, for the current academic year.

“Our favorite part of the campaign was being able to go up to some of our peers we had never met and talk to them about what we would do if we were elected,” Webb said.

“We walked back to West after the results were announced and were stopped and congratulated by people we didn’t even know,” Halligan said. “We told them to continue to let us know how we can best serve them and be leaders at Villanova.”