For full results from the 2016–17 YCC election, click here.
Leading with 41.73 percent of the undergraduate vote, Peter Huang ’18 was elected Yale College Council president on Friday night.
The vice presidential election will conclude with a two-person run-off on Tuesday between Christopher Bowman ’18 and Kevin Sullivan ’18, who garnered 33.21 and 28.49 percent of the vote, respectively.
In the presidential election, Sarah Armstrong ’18 was closest behind Huang with 23.26 percent of the 2,581-person vote. Diksha Brahmbhatt ’18, Josh Hochman ’18 and Carter Helschien ’18 earned 15.65, 11.43 and 7.83 percent, respectively, to round out the election.
According to the YCC constitution, a candidate can win with between 40 and 50 percent of the vote if he or she beats out the nearest candidate by at least five percent. Because Bowman earned less than 40 percent of the vote, he would have needed to defeat Sullivan by at least 10 percent in order to win the vice presidential election without a run-off.
“I feel like this moment is very surreal … because I absolutely believed 100 percent that there would be a run-off,” Huang said after polls closed. “I’m also excited for the opportunity, but I’m also overwhelmed with the news … The way I grouped [my platform] was two groups, one being macro level issues, like faculty diversity, and the other was supporting student groups. I want to tackle faculty diversity first.”
During his campaign, Huang ran on a platform of pursuing a number of policies in three areas — University services, academics and student life. These included overarching projects such as eliminating the student income contribution and promoting an increase in resources for ethnic studies, but also initiatives to support student groups by better integrating transfer students into the Yale community and creating a database for Yale alumni to provide input on their extracurricular groups.
Lauren Sapienza ’18 and Zach Murn ’17 were elected the new events director and finance director, respectively, in uncontested races.
This year’s election, whose polls were open from 9 a.m. Thursday to 9 p.m. Friday, saw a 46.7 percent increase in turnout, with 2,633 total votes cast this year compared to last year’s 1,795.
There were 52 abstentions in the presidential election, 763 in the vice presidential election, 530 for events director and 644 for finance director.