Hoosier Compass wins RHA elections

The Hoosier Compass will serve as the governing body for the Residence Halls Association, having won the election Tuesday with 491 total votes. The Chuck Norris ticket lost the race with 417 votes.

Senior Eric Gibson, the current RHA president, said the elections are still pending for 48 hours so any contesting issues can be filed.

The RHA executives create programs in the 11 residence halls to establish a welcoming environment in the residence centers as well as to help new students transition to IU.

The Central neighborhood brought in the most votes while voter turnout was fairly equal between the Northwest and Southeast neighborhood residence halls.

The vote tallies were comparable to last year, Gibson said.

“Everything went smoothly,” Gibson said. “There were no issues at all.”

The Hoosier Compass ticket said it believes hard work and campaigning skyrocketed its successful win in the election.

“I think that we were very effective in actively representing our ticket in the residence halls,” senior Jessica Schul, president-elect of the Hoosier Compass ticket, said. “Our Web site was professional. ...We tried everything to get ourselves out there.”

Junior Sean Apfelbaum, former candidate on the Chuck Norris ticket for vice president of programming, said, “It was a good race.”

“It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out next year,” Apfelbaum said.

IU students pay a $12 student activity fee per semester that goes directly to RHA funding for various programs. Despite this, many residents do not even know what RHA is and what it does for IU.

Freshman Kayla Douglas, a Read Center resident who helped out with the elections, said she thinks people in the student government seem to be the only ones voting, and from what she saw, not many others did.

Other students felt like voting in the RHA elections was not worth their time because they had never heard of the organization prior to being near the voting table.

“I’m too busy, and I don’t care what RHA is,” said freshman Hunter Harper, McNutt Quad resident. “Voting takes too much time, and my vote won’t matter.”

Some IU students took the time to vote in the RHA elections.

“I got an e-mail from my RA and didn’t know of the elections before two days ago,” sophomore Ryan Mabry, another McNutt Quad resident, said. “I picked a random ticket, straight Hoosier Compass.”

The names of the RHA tickets, The Chuck Norris Ticket and Hoosier Compass, appealed to many voters. However, several students did not know who the RHA executive candidates were and were ignorant of the tickets’ platforms.

“I voted half-and-half for each ticket,” freshman and Wright Quad resident Eduardo Sanchez said. “I don’t know what RHA is because of a lack of campaigning and knowledge. I don’t know about platforms. It was more about the names – Chuck Norris was a great marketing promotion.”