The Student Senate’s spring elections ended Wednesday, March 2, a runoff election for the last seat extending the original end date by three days.

The winner of the runoff, sophomore Matthew Adler, along with re-elected senator sophomore Matthew Kaplan, will join five other newly-elected senators to complete the 15-member unit. They are sophomores Scott Melamed and Azadeh Pourzan, and juniors Ozlem Gemici, Marshall Duer-Balkind and Danielle Indovino.

“I find this election encouraging,” said Shozo Kawaguchi, Oberlin’s associate dean of student life and faculty advisor to the student senate. “Thirty students running for seven seats – that is not bad.”

Kawaguchi, new to his position as of the fall of 2004, spent Winter Term this year going over the senate constitution with a former student senator, senior Morgan Shelton.

In addition to a high number of candidates, voter turnout was also high. 1,313 out of 2,683 students, or 48 percent of the student body, voted on-line, an improvement from the time of paper ballots when the task force struggled to meet the 20 percent quorum. Senior John Argaman, a member of the Student Senate Election Task Force, attributed the high numbers to online balloting.

Senators and candidates seemed to agree that this spring’s election held special importance.

“The student senate is becoming more visible,” said former student senator senior Curtis Ferguson II.

“The big thing this election was the upcoming strategic planning committee meeting on Wednesday,” said Argaman. “If the measures go through, the student senate has a big job ahead of it. There could be a period of more change than we’re used to on this campus.”

Among the topics to be discussed at the strategic planning committee meeting is the reduction of 12 faculty members, which could directly affect the efforts of Gemici, who ran for senate in the hopes of being a voice for the creation of a Middle Eastern Studies department at Oberlin. The creation of the program would require new additions to the faculty.

Gemici, like other senators, hopes to represent a variety of interests during her term.

“I am the co-chair of both the Middle Eastern Students Association and the International Students Association,” said Gemici. “Also, I am a member of the core committee of Colors of Rhythm and a member of the Muslim Students Association. I represent all of these groups on the senate.”

New senator Adler offered his take on the senate’s overall goals: “I think student senate is about showing the administration the value of student input. Can we all get what we want? I don’t know...but I think we can at least show the administration what it is we want.”