The 77th Fairfield University Student Association (FUSA) Presidential election took an interesting turn this semester. Write-in candidates Andrew Mejia ‘26 and Byran Santos ‘26 won the election by gaining significantly more write-in votes. Giovanni Young ‘25 was projected to win, as he was running unopposed. Young even stood on the stage at the FUSA presidential debates, with no candidate up against him.
This poses the question, is it fair that Young lost the election to two write-in candidates? The question of fairness is tricky because FUSA is run as a democracy and the students of Fairfield University deserve to vote for who they want to represent them. The students fought for who they wanted to see as their 77th president. Along the lines of fairness, the study body voted for what they wanted which can be deemed as fair.
That doesn’t discount the confusion of how two write-ins won the election. I know many students who were at a loss trying to figure out how the only candidate in the race didn’t get elected.
What I find most interesting is how Mejia and Santos had enough time to get as many votes as they did. It seems like a very short amount of time to campaign in an effective way. They never even officially declared a run for candidacy. FUSA sent out an email after the election with the official number of votes counted. Mejia and Santos gained 63% of the votes with Young with almost half of that, coming out of the election with 31% of the votes.
Although some people might see this as unfair and somewhat sneaky, this is a democracy. The students vote for who they want to lead them. It doesn’t necessarily matter if Mejia and Santos didn’t have an official presidential campaign, they still came out on top. The ballots speak for themselves. Numbers don’t lie, and in this case, there is no debate that this was a fair election. It doesn’t matter that both Mejia and Santos didn’t have an official campaign, they racked up more than half the votes and efficiently won fair and square.
I can understand why people would be very frustrated and shocked with the results of the FUSA 77th Presidential election, but Mejia and Santos found a way to fairly promote their campaign regardless of not declaring their run for candidacy. Since this is a democracy and there is an option for write-in candidates, it was completely fair that Meija and Santos won since most people wrote them in as their desired choice.
Even though most people voted for Meija and Santos through write-in and word of mouth despite not officially running for candidacy this counts as fair.
I know many people who were in shock when Meija and Santos won since they were write-in candidates, but I also knew others who told me that they were running. So when I found out that they won I wasn’t too surprised because my friend told me to vote for them as well.
Both Young and Hernon had a great campaign that mentioned lowering the price of textbooks, building career opportunities, late-night food trucks and making it known that everyone is welcome at Fairfield University, but they sadly fell short to both write-in candidates, Mejia and Santos.
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