Chauncey Mullins and Jessica Tran were named Mr. and Miss Ole Miss on Thursday night, with Mullins receiving 52.5 percent of the vote and Tran receiving 59.4 percent of the vote.
Newly minted Miss Ole Miss Tran, a senior biochemistry major from Hattiesburg and president of UM Active Minds, was nearly speechless after her win.
Jessica Tran (in red) celebrates with her friends and campaigners after winning Miss Ole Miss on Thursday. She won the runoff election against Jessi Lockett with 59.36% of the votes. Photo by Christian Johnson
“I love Ole Miss so much, but what I love more is the people,” Tran said. “Without the people, Ole Miss is just a school. I’m just so thankful to be here with them.”
The first thing Tran plans to do is “get eight hours of sleep.” But after that, she aims to build on her campaign platform of improving mental health resources on campus.
“My platform was increasing mental health resources on campus — not just increasing them but making them better quality and more accessible to all students,” Tran said.
Mullins, a senior public policy leadership and integrated marketing communications double major from Tupelo, said this election was not only for everyone but was for transfer students, in particular.
“I knew from the moment I stepped on this campus (that) I wanted to make it a better place for transfer students,” Mullins said.
Mullins added that as part of his platform, he “want(s) a transfer seat on (Associated Student Body) Senate” in an effort to be more inclusive.
Chauncey Mullins celebrates after winning Mr. Ole Miss on Thursday night. He defeated Mikhail Love with 52.51% of the vote. Photo by Megan Suttles
ASB Attorney General Austin Fiala said he believes the elections were a success.
“At 7:35 on election night, I can say that we’re very happy (about) the low number of violations,” Fiala said. “We’re happy with candidate feedback, and we are very happy with the general spirit of camaraderie and upholding the Creed that the candidates exhibited.”
After nearly 2 1/2 weeks of campaigning, the Office of the ASB Attorney General reviewed only three campaign violations. Two were dismissed by the Elections Review Board, and one candidate was administered a small fine.
For fall personality elections, Fiala’s office sought to focus on “smaller, more salient” details of the elections code. The office re-examined details in the code that, in years past, haven’t been followed.
“(The rules weren’t followed) because they aren’t viewed as important, but because we did them this year, it closed off a lot of areas for concern,” Fiala said.
In total, 3,990 votes were cast in the runoff election, down 1,119 votes from the first election on Tuesday. Fiala remarked that though these polling numbers were lower than those of the personality elections last fall, far more students voted in this election than did in the spring ASB election.
“This is something we’re very happy about,” Fiala said. “Considering the fact that there were so many candidates for so many positions, we were very happy that enough students were involved and knowledgeable about the campaign to feel passionately enough to vote.”
