(Courtesy of the Grays-Dubois campaign)

Grays-Dubois campaign won the Student Body President and Vice President election with the most second-place votes

BY BARRETT BALZER, NEWS EDITOR

Isaiah Grays and Jonathan Dubois are elected Mason’s 46th Student Body President and Vice President. 

Grays-Dubois posted to their Instagram account, “Our next student body President is ready to hear the voices of the STUDENTS!! Grays-Dubois and YOU will restore the you to GMU.”

The campaign, led by Grays, a freshman majoring in government and international politics, ran on the slogan: “Bringing the YOU back to GMU.”

The Grays-Dubois campaign had 327 first-place votes, 222 second-place votes, 196 third-place votes and 130 fourth-place votes. Despite receiving 28 fewer first-place votes than the Sheikholeslami-Bell campaign, they were propelled to victory by the number of second-place votes through the ranked-choice voting system.

In second place, the Sheikholeslami-Bell campaign collected 355 first-place votes, 151 second-place votes, 153 third-place votes and 162 fourth-place votes

The Boyd-Applbaum campaign finished in third place with 194 first-place votes, 198 second-place votes, 189 third-place votes and 192 fourth-place votes. 

The Johnston-Lincoln campaign obtained  117 first-place votes, 201 second-place votes, 203 third-place votes and 233 fourth-place votes.

After the results were announced, the Grays-Dubois campaign expressed excitement on Instagram, saying, “THANK YOU PATRIOTS 💚💛 Your next student body President and Vice-President @isaiah.grays & @j_onath.n ‼️ This Administration will need [sic] for YOU 🫵.”

Grays was not surprised by the election’s turnout, saying, “I believe that being able to go and speak to voters on the ground definitely gave more confidence to us that we had this race.”

Their main campaign strategy focused on groundwork initiatives, meeting with student voters at places such as Southside, Ikes and the Johnson Center.

“It was more so an aspect of talking to people personally, so whether that be groups or individuals, actually have a better spread,” Vice President Dubois said. “Realizing that a lot more of the work would be done actually going out and talking to people. I believe on that last day, as [Grays] said, we were either 50 votes ahead or 50 votes behind.”

Recent Board of Visitors (BOV) meetings discussed topics including tuition increases and diversity, equity and equality. In response,  Grays said, “I think the real question is, how do you uplift the voices of students? You go and talk to them. Just as we were talking to students on the campaign, I’m gonna do the same for the Board of Visitors.”

“We did make the commitment of listening sessions, but we also said that we were passionate about food, tuition,” said Grays 

In response to the April 10 BOV meeting, which approved an increase in tuition, Grays said, “I want to lower tuition down to its lowest cost ever, but I am not a person who wants to give people false hope, but I can say this, that I’m gonna fight. That’s my promise to the people.”

Grays closed, “I’m here to listen to your concerns, and I’m gonna do everything that’s in my power to help you.”

The new President and Vice President-elect were sworn in on May 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Room C in the Johnson Center.