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Ghanaian Female Elected CUSU President In UK

A Ghanaian female, Priscilla Mensah was elected president of the Cambridge Uni's Students' Union in UK.

Priscilla Mensah won a landslide victory for the Cambridge Uni's Students' Union (CUSU) president.

Turnout was double that of last year with over 4,000 students voting. Priscilla beat controversial candidate Milo Edwards to the post with 2,077 votes, compared to Milo’s 1,520.

Priscilla pledged to retrain existing tutors on top of the current training for incoming tutors, reduce the 50% disparity in contact time among colleges and rank colleges according to welfare provisions. Priscilla was previously the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) Women’s Representative for the CUSU Women’s Campaign and is a co-founder of ‘Fly’, the Cambridge University BME Women’s Network.

She commented to The Cambridge Student:  “I’m genuinely delighted. I've really, really wanted this, and I have an incredible machine to thank. I'm overwhelmed by their support." On the turnout: “it's been fantastic, and made the candidates galvanise their campaigns.”

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She defeated Milo Edwards, a candidate who has been surrounded by controversy throughout the campaign. His initial campaign video, which offered students jam sandwiches, subsidised freddos and proposed a Reading Week in which all students would be obligated to travel to Reading, led many to believe that he was a “joke candidate”. Milo was keen to clarify in the Presidential debate that he was “not a joke candidate”.

A later anonymous blogpost inspired more controversy after accusing Milo of making an insensitive joke about domestic violence at a fundraiser for the Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre.

One of Edwards' supporters commented: “Whatever happened, Milo galvanised the electorate. More people voted. We always wanted a campaign where CUSU engaged with people. Priscilla now has a mandate, that is fantastic and therefore CUSU is a more representative body, which has always been its purpose.”

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