Patrick Kennewell elected University Council undergraduate representative 2019–20

Words by Felix Eldridge

Over the last two weeks, the University held an election to fill the vacant Undergraduate Representative position on its University Council. Patrick Kennewell, a fourth-year medical student has emerged victorious from a pool of four candidates. Patrick has experience as a former health and medical sciences faculty board member and is a current AUU Board Director.

His campaign focused on delivering:

• More study and leisure spaces across all campuses
• Smaller tutorial sizes and more class flexibility
• Increased funding to health and wellbeing services

Accumulating 537 votes, he won the position on primary votes alone, polling almost a hundred votes more than his next competitor, Aidan Johnson. The quota for victory was half of the total number of votes plus one (531 votes). As he won a majority of votes outright, preferences were not distributed at this election.

The list of primary votes is as follows:

Patrick Kennewell — 537 votes

Aidan Johnson — 438 votes

Anna Kalamkarian — 56 votes

Alexandra Nichols — 30 votes

This was Kennewell’s second attempt at winning a spot on University Council after being nudged out by Michael Reschke in the previous election.

The future of the RCC partnership agreement and the implementation of the new Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Plan will be among the key issues that he will be facing in council. Kennewell’s term will end on the 5th of March 2020.

The official vote tally can be accessed here:

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/governance/elections/council/Detail_Report.txt

Disclaimer:

Felix ran as a ‘Unite’ candidate in the 2018 student elections