Tom Chigbo pledged yesterday to achieve “something really meaningful” in his term of office, after being elected CUSU President on Wednesday.

Joe Farish’s election as Access Officer and Clare Tyson’s uncontested election as Co-ordinator meant that the Chigbo slate of ‘Vision, Ideas and Experience’ won all three of the posts it contested.

In a closely-fought race, Sam Wakeford was elected Education Officer, narrowly beating his nearest contender, Ed Maltby. Although Maltby was ahead after first preference votes were counted, he fell behind Wakefield as other preferences were taken into account.

Amiya Bhatia was elected Welfare Officer while, in an uncontested sabbatical race, Natalie Szarek was elected Women’s Officer.

A referendum on creating a sabbatical Ethical Affairs Officer reached the two-thirds majority needed to be valid.

This year’s election saw one of the highest turnouts in recent years, with 21.2 per cent of eligible electors voting either online or in College. The comparable figure for last year’s elections was 17.1 per cent.

Chigbo, whose only opponent, Guolong Li, pulled out earlier this week amid accusations of homophobia, will take over the presidency in July, though he insists that the task of getting to grips with his job starts now.

Given that he was unopposed, Chigbo told Varsity yesterday that he was “not surprised but definitely very pleased” by the result.

“The coverage so far from the elections has been really positive and I think people – not just us, but students in general – are a lot more excited about CUSU than they have been for a long time, and I think we can use that opportunity to do something really meaningful for next year,” he said.

“I think students want to get involved, which is good, and that’s shown by the high turnout and the high number who voted for us.”

Li, a second-year mathematician from Churchill, withdrew from the presidential race late on Monday night after he made controversial comments relating to the LBGT autonomous campaign. In hustings at Caius on Saturday, which were streamed live on the internet by Varsity, Li was asked for his policies related to the LBGT campaign. He replied: “I think it’s more important that we provide help to them, to persuade them to be normal, to no longer be LBGT – to change them.”

Over 500 students joined a Facebook group expressing concern over his comments. Li subsequently announced that he was pulling out of the race for President. “I never thought that I could win in the election, but I participated in [it] because I want to let more people see the hustings and to make the election more interesting,” he said.

Li also pulled out of last year’s presidential election after he breached the rules by failing to seek tutorial permission to take a year out if elected.

Chigbo was quick to welcome to high turnout. “We had really good attendance at all the hustings, which was really good. Most candidates appeared at most of the hustings, which was very different from last year, where many candidates just did their 25 per cent quota [required by CUSU], and that showed a real desire to engage with the student body, which is promising for next year.”

Commenting on the election rule change allowing candidates to use Facebook, Tyson said, “It’s quite a simple thing but it meant that it got the elections out there to the wider student body.”

By Andrew Bellis