Schuerger, Cespedes win USG election in landslide

Robert “B.J.” Schuerger and Juan Cespedes were announced landslide winners of the 2000 Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential election on Tuesday. They won an overwhelming 51.4 percent of the student vote. “I think the tremendous amount of votes showed we received a mandate by the students,” Schuerger said. Schuerger-Cespedes received 2,264 of the 4,406 valid votes cast for president and vice president in the elections held April 11 and 12. The USG Judicial Panel subtracted 415 votes from Schuerger-Cespedes’ tally for elections violations. Those decisions are under appeal. Coming in a distant second was the candidate team of Tina Diggs and Tony Porto with 655 votes, or 14.9 percent of the total votes cast. Diggs said she was unhappy with the outcome, but satisfied with her team’s effort. “I’m really proud of our performance, and we accomplished a lot by finishing the race. B.J. is a good guy and I’m very confident he’ll step up next year,” she said. The team of Greg Wolfe and Erik Booth came in third with 624 votes, or 14.2 percent of the vote. The Breinlinger-Wolf team received 243 votes, Angelica-Lalich received 228 votes and Thompson-Osborn received 209 votes. Write-in candidates received a total of 183 votes. “Every team worked hard and put forth a strong effort,” said USG President Josh Mandel. “I am confident that any team would do a good job representing the undergraduates.” Schuerger said that a key factor in his victory was the www.votebj.com website, designed by Chris Wayda, Alex Cowan and Mike Saronovsky. “We defined how important the web vote is,” Schuerger said. “The web vote redefined how USG elections will be won in the future.” Schuerger said he hopes that USG elections will continue to see an increase in voter turnout with the help of the web vote. Schuerger said he plans to focus on three main issues after he, along with Juan Cespedes and the newly elected USG senators, are inaugurated on May 10: the technology fee, the Greek Life Task Force and the alcohol policy. The proposed technology fee is a $50 per-quarter increase for full-time students and a proportional increase for part-time students. The money is designated to help increase the technology offered at Ohio State. Schuerger said he feels the fee is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. “USG must have a stronger voice in the negotiations,” Schuerger said. “USG must stand up for the students and their best interests.” Schuerger said he feels the current alcohol policy and the Greek Life Task Force plan need to be reviewed. He said he wants the alcohol policy to be in the students’ best interest, and plans for USG to have an active role in negotiating with the task force. Another area Schuerger said he wants to review is the USG judicial process. The team plans to continue through with appeals of the judicial panel’s decisions against them. “We want to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Cespedes said. “Although it did not change the outcome of this election, we would like to set a precedent so judicial hearings do not ever alter election results.”

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