KU students elect leaders for next school year

The Kansas University student body president for 2016-2017 is Gardner senior Stephonn Alcorn, left, and the vice president is Providence, R.I., senior Gabby Naylor, right.

Kansas University students have elected a new student body president and vice president for the upcoming school year.

The student body president for 2016-2017 will be Stephonn Alcorn and the vice president will be Gabby Naylor, according to results released Thursday evening by the KU Student Senate Elections Commission. Voting took place Wednesday and Thursday, with the polls closing at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Stephonn Alcorn

Gabby Naylor

Alcorn has been Student Senate’s Government Relations Director this academic year. Naylor has been a School of Business representative on this year’s Senate.

The two led the One KU coalition, which describes its mission as “cultivating tangible change” at KU by establishing “unity and inclusion by addressing the challenges and embracing the differences we face as individual students, working together as One KU.”

Alcorn’s and Naylor’s platforms are student vitality, inclusion and representation and campus renewal, according to the One KU website.

Specific goals include improving mental health services on campus; helping connect more freshmen with research opportunities; creating a peer mentoring program for first-generation students; establishing the You at KU program to recruit students from inner-city high schools; revitalizing the Potter Lake area; and improving campus sustainability practices.

Alcorn and Naylor defeated presidential candidate Richie Hernandez and vice presidential candidate John Castellaw, running as the CARE KU coalition.

In addition to the two executives, KU students also elected dozens of Senate representatives.

The Elections Commission did not release vote percentages or turnout Thursday night but said that information would be shared once the commission officially certifies the election results, expected Sunday. The Elections Commission did say more than 700 more votes were cast in this year’s election than in last year’s.