At 6:27 p.m. in the Student Center, the candidates in this year’s Undergraduate Student Government and a handful of their friends gathered near the student organization offices to watch today’s election results come up on the television in front of the USG offices at 6:30 p.m.

The anticipation built as the team counting the votes hooked up their system to display the results. After a tense six minutes of technical difficulties, the results were displayed.

Marvin Logan will be the next executive director of USG, and although that position was uncontested, he said that he was still nervous about the results.

“I’m only as good as the worst member of the USG,” he said. “I wanted the right body of individuals, the right people for the job.”

Not all voted for every position, but 1,256 students voted in this year’s USG elections, according to the voter results. That is 5.7 percent of this year’s total Kent State undergraduate student body. The number is even lower than last year’s voter turnout, which was 1,462, and follows a trend of decreasing USG voter turnout over the past several years.

The most votes came from the College of Arts and Sciences, where the candidates running for senator received a total of 265 votes.

One of the closest races was between Lauren Buchanan and Tia Loop, contenders for the USG director of communications. Loop won by two votes.

“We both knew it was going to be close,” Loop said. “I’m proud of Lauren. I think she did a great job in the race and will go on to do great things at Kent.”

 “We are both talented student leaders, so I knew whoever won will rock it out,” Buchanan said.

Another close race was between Robert Lierenz and Kayla Morrison. Lierenz won with 603 votes to Morrison’s 586 votes.

“I’m gonna find those 17 people and put them on a Christmas list,” Lierenz said.

Lierenz said that he has many plans for his time as director.

“I want to try to get all the candidates from the 2014 elections here and make sure that everybody comes here to address the students,” he said. “Just generally increase political literacy around here to try and make policies something that students can actually access. I want to distill it so students see it as something that actually pertains to their lives. There’s a lot to do, and I can’t wait to do it.”

Joseph Bizjak, the USG’s current director of governmental affairs, said that he was impressed with all the candidates who ran this year.

“It was a very clean race,” he said. “I was really happy with the way that everybody conducted themselves, and I really could not be more impressed.”

Logan said that he plans to run the USG differently than his predecessor, Amish Patel, but he kept his plans vague.

“Sam Cook once said that change is gonna come, and for USG a change has come,” he said.

Contact Blair Donald at [email protected].