UB turns green with a spot of orange

After three days of flyer tossing and hand shaking, six of Progress party's seven candidates for office were elected as next year's Student Association leaders, including taking all three executive board spots - a far cry from last year's 10-vote victory margin.

Peter Grollitsh, SA's current treasurer, and Ashish Abraham, current International Clubs Coordinator, took the organization's top spots Thursday night by 485 votes. John Martin, their party's treasurer-hopeful, won by 64 votes.

"I can't even explain or put into words how it feels," Grollitsh said. "Our supporters were working their butts off."

Almost 2,700 students contributed to putting the Progress party into power, a two percent increase in voter turnout from last year's SA election. Both Grollitsh and Abraham said they are excited about the potential to work for UB students in the next academic year.

"I want the students to know that they can expect one hell of a year. I am just happy to continue what I have already started," Grollitsh said. "I hope I can make that transition from treasurer to president and hope to make it flawless."

Progress beat out UB Redefine's Christopher Mendoza and Shuja Hussain for president and vice president respectively.

"I just want to thank my supporters," he said. "Hopefully both ideologies can come together and figure things out. I'm happy with the way we ran the race because we tried our best."

The closest race of the election was that for SA treasurer, where the margin of victory of Martin over Redefine's Andrew DeShong was less than that of votes drawn by third-party candidate Zachary Lauria.

"In one aspect it's a defeat. But I don't feel Peter (Grollitsh) will deny us input into SA," DeShong said.

Martin, who will have the privilege of serving with his Progress party running mates, immediately promised that his election would bring hard work for all of UB.

Progress party candidates will also fill three out of four SUNY SA Delegate positions next year. Melody Mercedes retained her seat as delegate - she was the only Redefine candidate elected.

Eliot Sherman, the other incumbent SA Delegate running for re-election, was defeated and came in sixth out of the eight in total votes for the candidates.

Latrece Seneca, who took the most votes of all the SA Delegate contenders, was excited about being the neutral person elected. She explained that she is willing to include the issues brought up by the UB Redefine party in addition to her party's platform.

"I'm feeling good," Seneca said. "I'm such an involved person so I have remained neutral and cannot wait to work with the issues from the other side."

The other two Progress winners for SA Delegates were newcomers Rohan D'Souza and Jack Niejadlik. Niejadlik, the current homecoming king, is excited to have won the election and get the chance to work with the student body.

"It was a huge victory for us and next year is going to a huge year of progress," Niejadlik said.

Helping hands for the Progress Party felt that they had redeemed themselves from a weak showing last year. Greg Stern - the party's former presidential candidate and this year's Progress campaign manager - was thrilled with the results.

"I want to thank everyone who voted Progress," Stern said. "Peter's done a great job all year long and this will help create a better SA."

UB Redefine struggled through controversy during most of the election, including Mendoza's exclusion from the ballot until six hours after the election had begun. University Police arrested Mendoza on Sunday morning after he was charged with unlawfully dealing alcohol to a minor. Mendoza claims that the charge did not involve him because he was sleeping when the incident occurred.

"I had a lot to overcome," Mendoza said. "Even with losing six hours, we shattered the vote count from last year and that's exciting."

He added that he is generally pleased with the election results, and holds no hard feelings.

"The only way I would have been unhappy is if I didn't see everybody putting in their all - that's the only thing that would have made me mad. There's no way I could be unhappy about this," he said.

One thing almost all of the candidates from both parties shared was a desire to rest after the three-day-long election.

"This win won't set in until a couple of days after this," Grollitsh said. "I just can't wait to get some sleep after the past couple of days."