By James Keller
In perhaps the least controversial races of this year’s election, CJSW and NUTV’s referendum questions passed giving both groups much needed student funding.
NUTV’s levy increase of $0.50 per semester was approved 2,401 votes to 2,145, CJSW’s $1.00 per semester hike passed 2,626 to 1,954.
“We had a good campaign team and we had a lot of volunteers helping out with it,” said CJSW Station Manager Chad Saunders. “We really tried to reach students that haven’t heard us before.”
NUTV Executive Director Kevin Allen was also pleased, as the extra dollars will fund recent efforts to get closed circuit television up and running on campus.
“I think the University of Calgary community is going to benefit from closed circuit,” said Allen. “It’s a big relief.”
Both questions passed with slim majorities, but Students’ Union Vice-President Operations and Finance Natasha Dhillon doesn’t see this as an issue.
“You have to look at the other referendum questions we had,” she said. “There were so many of them asking for quite a bit more money that students might have been just saying ‘no, I don’t want any at all.’”
Saunders echoed Dhillon’s sentiments.
“You always hope everyone loves you, but some people are going to vote no for everything,” Saunders said. “What most people do is they look at the ballot and they say, ‘do I feel like paying more money?’”
While problems occured during the elections with online voting, Saunders doesn’t feel that either race was affected by them.
“Democracy is all about the love,” said Saunders. “Glitches happen the first year. Don’t lose sleep over it.”