GW Law Students elected Shallum Atkinson to be the Student Bar Association’s president during its March 10 election.
Director of Elections Sidney Lee announced at the SBA Senate meeting Tuesday that Atkinson, the current vice president of student affairs, received 60.6 percent of the votes, defeating current Finance Committee Chair John Tuley by 164 votes. SBA Sen. Kaitlin Fontana secured the vice presidency, receiving 85.8 percent of the votes and defeating 1L Leadership board member in the SBA executive cabinet Maggie Brooks.
Of 1,938 eligible voters, 720 voted in the election, a turnout of 37.2 percent, a slight increase from last year’s 31 percent participation rate.
“Congratulations to those that did run and did not secure a position,” said Executive Vice President Garrett May. “As anyone who’s been in SBA for a while can tell, there’s always ample work to go around.”
The senate agreed to allocate $2,837.69 to the Federalist Society for three of its members to attend the national student symposium on March 3 and 4 after the organization received a half-off discount from the conference. The senate unanimously agreed to allocate $2,000 to the Black Law Students Association to aid the organization in hosting a brunch and paying for gifts during graduation week.
The senate also allocated $473.80 to the Christian Legal Society to pay for travel for Brad Littlejohn, the president of the Davenant Institute — a religious think tank — to speak at an event at GW in early April about Christian nationalism and civil law.
SBA Sen. Cody Ingraham said he met with members of the University-Wide Programs Fund committee and proposed reforms to improve graduate students’ access to the fund. He said he proposed opening the fund up to events that are not University-wide but have at least 350 attendees, and he proposed increasing the promotion of events receiving UWPF funding to graduate students.
“I think we’re moving maybe towards some progress,” he said.
Ingraham, who is also a Student Association senator, said he submitted a bill to the SA Senate to urge the University’s Office of Student Life to reform the University-Wide Programs Fund and better include graduate student organizations.
The next SBA meeting will be held on April 2 at 9:15 p.m. in the Law Learning Center.
