GPSA delays announcing election results

The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly is withholding the results of last week’s… The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly is withholding the results of last week’s elections until today because of a number of unspecified “complications.”

“There’s a really good reason for this,” chairman of the elections committee Kawa Shwaish said. The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of business student added that he was “not at liberty” to say more on the situation.

The committee met Sunday afternoon to discuss a few complications that arose when the results of the election came in Friday night, Shwaish said. The GPSA represents Pitt’s roughly 10,000 graduate school students and allocates their activities fee fund.

Shwaish declined to comment on what the committee was reviewing, but said the process was necessary. He said that he would not give out information beyond what the candidates were told about the delay. Originally the newly elected members of the board were meant to find out the election results Saturday morning.

The candidates will now find out the results some time today. Shwaish said the committee chose to delay the decision — typically made the Saturday after the election — partly because of last year’s controversy.

When Nila Devanath won the presidency last year, some people, including other candidates, questioned Devanath’s eligibility because she was an undergraduate at the time of the election.

The elections committee members, whose terms had already ended, were forced to reconvene and discuss the issue at hand.

As current chairman of the elections committee, it is Shwaish’s job to notify all of the candidates this morning.

The Assembly Board, composed of representatives from each graduate school, will be notified next, Shwaish said. The announcement will then be posted on the GPSA website for the public sometime in the afternoon.

The candidates had different responses to the delayed results.

“Some of the candidates said, ‘That’s great,’ and some said, ‘Why can’t you tell us now?’” he said.