Orla Norton has been elected Ents Officer on the third count, having received 1,602 votes.
In her election speech, Norton said: “I want to thank everyone on my campaign team […] and everyone who passed out flyers.”
In a poll conducted by the University Times, Orla Norton – who has organised hundreds of events as Frenchsoc’s Ents Officer – took the lead at 27.9% of votes, with former President and Treasurer of Trinity Indian Society Yuv Garg following with 27.3% of votes. It was predicted to be an exceptionally close race between these two. John O’Hara, Captain of the DU Men’s Hockey Club was predicted to finish third, with 22.93% of votes followed by Finn Hallwood, Captain of the DU swim team with 13.26% votes.
Her competitor Yuv Garg received 1,166 votes.
On the first count Finn Hallwood and RON were eliminated due to having the lowest proportion of votes. Their votes were then transferred to voters’ second choices, leaving 580 votes to be redistributed.
On the second count, no candidate had reached the 1575 vote quota needed to win and John O’Hara was eliminated. 769 votes were redistributed for the third count. 199 votes were non-transferable.
Norton ran on a platform of sustainability, event promotion and welfare accessibility. She plans to introduce a “sustainability officer” to the Ents committee and to put pressure on the Pav to end their usage of disposable cups. Promising to provide anti-spiking lids during events, Norton also states that event promotion is a priority and emphasises better color contrast in graphics and the continuation of the weekley student email. Norton also focussed on crowd control in her coverage.
Yuv Garg’s manifesto included a commitment to increase the level of Pav events holding two each semester and expanding the variety of music included. Garg also committed to creating a college-wide calendar to include all society events being held.
John O’Hara campaign focused on keeping Trinity Ball prices below 100 euro and to encourage students and societies to run the events that they want to run.
Competitor Finn Hallwood had planned to hold charity events and increase accessibility for student events. Diversifying events was a core belief stated in his manifesto stating that this would allow for Ents to have a greater reach in the community.
