At 4 p.m. Friday, Maryam Noor was officially declared the winner of the Student Trustee election with 197 votes — a mere 5 votes ahead of Lilya Mitelman, her sole competitor.
“It was a close call,” said Student Activities Administrative Assistant Dennis Shannakian. He said that since the race was so close, the Scantron forms used as ballots in the election were hand-checked twice for accuracy.
Noor will be sworn in as Student Trustee Monday at the 6 p.m. Board of Trustees meeting, which will be held in conference rooms A and B inside Hinson campus center.
DASB results will not be known until later next week, according to Shannakian.
At 4 p.m. Monday, all candidates must hand in expense reports to the Student Activities office. 4 p.m. Monday is also the deadline for all DASB candidates to submit grievance forms, if necessary.
By Tuesday at 4 p.m., all campaign materials must be taken down from around campus. If any candidate fails to observe this time limit, he or she may face disqualification.
The DASB Election Committee will reconvene on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. to consider grievances and candidate expenses, and on Thursday or Friday the DASB ballots will be counted. The results will be announced shortly thereafter.
The elections were extended one extra week in order to allow a greater percentage of De Anza students to vote. Voting ceased Friday at noon in order to allow the new student trustee to be sworn in today. “There was no way to extend it,” said Mitelman after Friday’s announcement.
“They have to swear in the [new] student trustee on Monday.”
The election committee unanimously voted to disqualify Mitelman on May 24 for failing to remove an election banner visible from the polling area. On May 25, the same committee threw out a week’s worth of student trustee votes when it decided 14-1 to allow Mitelman to run. Mitelman said that the overall election had received enough votes for certification, but that the votes for student trustee did not represent 3 percent of the student body.
Posted: 6:21 PM PDT (0121 GMT)