One side of the audience broke into quiet celebration as Thor Lund and running mate Wills Brown were announced the winners of this year’s student government presidential election. The other side sat in silence for a moment before slowly standing up to offer their congratulations to the equally exhausted opposing campaign.

“Sometimes there are not words to describe how you feel,” said Thor Lund after his win. “I want to thank everyone who’s put in all this time helping us out. Obviously it’s been a very long six weeks. I think everybody is very happy it’s over.”

As for whom his biggest support was during this time, Lund named his new vice-president elect.
“We’ve been spending twenty-four-seven together these last six weeks. I can’t say enough good things about him,” he said. “This is just as much his thing as it is mine.”

According to Eric Nimmer, chair of the Election Supervisory Board, 4,683 students cast their ballots in the election, and Lund and Brown took 54.9 percent of the votes. After a closely fought battle, John Lawler said that he and running mate Terrence Maas would continue to fight for the community around them.

“The great thing about this election is that we got to meet a lot of people at the city and local level in addition to students,” said Lawler. “And one of my promises, win or lose, was to fight for students to be a bigger presence in the city of Austin, so I look forwards to the next couple of months and the next year to be fighting for student rights.”

Lawler said that after this that he would first and foremost begin working with the affordable student housing program in west campus.

“I think that’s something we as student government and we as a student body really need to jump into,” he said. “It’ll be a lot of fun but it’ll be a lot of tough work at the same time.”

Dr. Soncia Reagins-Lilly, Dean of Students, was also in attendance at the announcements, and said she looked forward to working with the new leaders to help achieve their goals.

“I am always eager to work with them and by their side to make sure their platform is a reality so that this time next year they’re able to say: ‘This is what we said we were going to do, and we delivered, and we delivered with the right amount of support and guidance,’” said Dean Reagins-Lilly said.

As the part of the election code that was suspended in order to reinstate Madison Gardner back on the ballot temporarily - “the no association between candidates of any kind” – the Election Supervisory Board will begin preparing to present their list of election code recommendations to the SG Assembly.

“I think my recommendation is going to be more of a friendly speech, which is going to be: ‘Hey assembly, how about we not break rules next year?’,” said Nimmer, who then pointed to Matt Portillo, wearing a Lawler and Maas shirt. “And I’m sure this man in the t-shirt could explain that it’s possible to not break a rule.”

“Right,” said Portillo. “We didn’t break any rules during this election.”

Nimmer then continued, “And I think fact that Thor is here and he won, and is also the person who is not an SG insider, says that it’s not like you to have to have the prior knowledge to ‘survive’ elections. I just think we act have a code now that makes people responsible.”

A confirmed date has not been set to present the Board’s recommendations. Until then, Lund and Brown will soon begin their year as the new president and vice-president of UT-Austin’s student government.