Unopposed candidates, Kawthar “Kathy” Azzam and Christopher Rodriguez have been elected as new Associated Students of Cerritos College president and vice president. Philip Herrera was elected as student trustee.
Azzam and Rodriguez gathered 79 out of 94 votes total from the student body.
Azzam and Rodriguez agreed that they had to work harder to prove themselves, as they did not want others to see the positions as being handed to them.
“I believe we worked hard for this. Although people noticed that we were unopposed I still felt the need to put in all my effort into it,” said Azzam, “I think it’s necessary to show people that we [wanted] it versus getting it handed to us.”
Herrera received 193 out of 298 votes.
Four votes overall were disqualified.
Herrera said he was not surprised, not because of overconfidence, but due to the hard work dedicated by his campaign team.
“I saw how hard my campaign team was working [and] saw how much support I had from the student body and above everything, just how dedicated my campaign workers were.
“I’m really proud of them and I think that this victory belongs to them more than me, actually,” said Herrera
He was also pleased with the voter turnout.
“There was a nice amount of people that turned out,” Herrera elaborated, “Not so much on the presidential election, but you know, I really respect everyone who came out today and all the trustee candidates that had their campaign team out there.”
Azzam and Rodriguez believe they faced a barrier with students not voting. They believe it was due to not having their 2018 Spring semester sticker.
Despite running unopposed and being happy with the results, Azzam said she was urging for student voices to be heard.
“The amount of students that did vote, I’m glad that they did,” said President-elect Azzam, “I just want to say thank you to everyone that helped us.”
Herrera claimed he did not rest or stop and ran a campaign as if someone else was running an equally hard campaign against him and his team.
The campaign team spent a lot of the day talking to clubs, classrooms and booking meetings with professors, the hard work according to Herrera.
He did not want to have any regrets and feels it is partly why he received a high amount of votes.
As student trustee, Herrera looks forward to a current project regarding the transition of food vendors on campus. He has been following the case since the food vendors were almost replaced earlier in the semester.
More excited than anything that it is over, Rodriguez said, “We got a lot of work ahead of us.”
