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And so just like that, the Logan Edgar era comes to an end. Francisco Hernandez – a career student pol if ever there was one – has come down the middle of a Scarfie vote split by Ryan Edgar and Zac Gawn to claim the OUSA student presidency for 2013.

You have to wonder how Gawn and Ryan feel about each other right now. Undoubtedly they were competing for the same voters, the larrikin Scarfies who want another larrikin fronting OUSA. Put together that’s 2000 votes, more than enough to have defeated Hernandez.

Whatever you think of Hernandez, he’s probably the most qualified for the role. He’s been inside OUSA for a while, he knows how the place runs, and he’s actually interested in politics. It was all well and good having a populist Scarfie running the show, and Logan the man met his hour with the advent of the VSM era. But OUSA without politics is like meth without a crack pipe.

There has been a constant refrain this year that student’s aren’t political enough; that they aren’t even standing up for their own rights and abilities. They aren’t, not nearly enough, but this is the result of a lack of leadership from OUSA. Last year when VSM was coming down to the wire, the OUSA executive staged a pretty successful protest. This year there hasn’t been a single protest, a single event, a single campaign.

But worse, this year there was no disagreement on the executive, no dissent, no conflict. OUSA, like all political spaces, should be a place for political debate, not assent or blind agreement.

Hopefully in 2013 we’ll see an OUSA exec that isn’t afraid to have the debate, and where necessary, to ask student’s what they think. And while Edgar isn’t on the exec at all, Gawn won the Vice President’s role. Whether Gawn and Hernandez can work effectively together remains to be seen. They are on polar opposites of the asset sales debate, but have both campaigned on getting student flats up to scratch. However, we should hope that to an extent they disagree. The exec is at it’s strongest when there is a competition of ideas, not just a rubber stamp exec that does what the president says.

Two things to leave you with: 17% of the student body voted against OUSA supporting gay marriage; I guess you have to hope that they were voicing their opinion that OUSA shouldn’t be taking political opinions. And in a cosmic coincidence, 17% of the student body voted. Not bad, but not fantastic either.