After three days of voting, the Lafayette student body chose Aaron Little ’16 to take the student body president position and Scott Bradley ’16 to take the student body vice-president position.
Little ran with Caroline Bitterly ‘17 in the election as his candidate for vice president, while Bradley was the running mate of presidential candidate Ricky Lanzilotti ’16.
In addition to the split-ticket result, the votes were close. Little won 733-713 in votes, with 36 students abstaining. Bradley won 708-665, with 109 students abstaining.
“I wasn’t shocked when I saw [the split-ticket result], but I was partially because I figured that people saw us campaigning as a ticket so they would vote along ticket lines,” Little said. “When I heard the results I thought it was curious, but it wasn’t game changing.”
A total of 1482 students voted in the election, about 60 percent of the 2,486-member student body. Candidates continued to campaign throughout the election in order to encourage people to vote.
“I make the analogy that the days before [the election] were like practice and those three days were the game,” Lanzilotti said. “ [Aaron and I] were probably campaigning harder those three days ensuring that people were voting. Nine hundred people didn’t vote, so as hard as we tried…we still didn’t reach almost half of the school, which is staggering to think about.”
Little and Bradley’s term will begin Dec. 6, the day after classes finish, with a gavel-passing ceremony with current President Connor Heinlein and current Vice President Ryan Monahan. The president- and vice president-elect expressed their optimism about their new partnership.
“Scott and I are Bio TAs together so we have known each other outside of this,” Little said. “We plan to meet for lunch just to discuss our different ideas and to get him on board with my visions.”
Bradley, who does not have student government experience, is working on his own preparations for his new job.
“I have met with a few individuals to go over what the expectations are and I will be meeting with Ryan Monahan, VP Emeritus, to go over every detail,” Bradley said. “Other than that, I will be reviewing Parliamentary Procedure for meetings, continue to go over the bylaws, and continue combing through student government policy in general.”
Despite losing the presidential race, Lanzilotti was supportive of Bradley’s win.
“I was with Ricky in [Williams Art Center] after an Evening of A Capella, he took a call from Connor Heinlein and left the room for better reception,” Bradley wrote in an email. “[After,] Connor called me to inform me of the result of the vice presidential election…when Ricky came back, he was super excited for me and we had one of those movie scene running-through-the-hallway-embraces.”
Lanzilotti, who plans to run for Treasurer in the upcoming internal student government vote, reflected on the election and what it did for him.
“After every election people think ‘What could I have done?’, but at the end of the day you have to respect the process and I definitely did,” Lanzilotti said. “I learned a lot about myself. I always come back to the phrase ‘It’s what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.’ It was a little disappointing, but you just got to move on.”
Little was gracious for his win and enthusiastic for his term to start.
“Thank you everyone who voted,” Little said. “It was one of the higher turnouts we’ve seen in Lafayette history. I’m excited everyone voted for me. I hope everyone is being my ideas, because I will certainly be soliciting student feedback and asking for people to sign petitions for example. So there is a demonstrated student interest in my proposed changes and it’s going to be fun year.”
Bitterly could not be reached for comment.