Student Union held its fall elections Tuesday, with students electing 13 senators, 14 Treasury representatives and six ArtSci Council members.

This year, 24 percent of the total student population voted, an increase from last year’s 23.1 percent. Approximately 1,700 students voted for Senate and Treasury, while around 1,100 voted for ArtSci Council.

One change in this year’s election was the removal of undergraduate, school-specific Senate seats listed on the ballot. In past elections, senators were elected on separate ballots by undergraduate school. Freshman and SU Election Commissioner Steven Kish explained that Senate candidates for three open school-specific positions—Arts & Sciences, Business and Engineering—were selected from one ballot this year.

“This is the first year that our [Senate] ballot was [composed] in a non-school specific way. In previous years, people would vote for Senators for [a specific undergraduate school]. This year, we still take the top vote-getter from each school that has a candidate up in the general election, but we don’t actually parse out the ballot like that,” Kish said. “We take the top vote-getter from each one of those schools, and they are automatically awarded seats. The rest of the 13 are ‘at large’ seats.”

Kish also noted that every voter received a distinct ballot on Tuesday. The order of candidates was randomly generated in an effort to not let the order in which candidates are listed affect the election outcome.

The recent legislation to remove incumbent tags on SU ballots, which aimed to allow new candidates equal opportunities to incumbents, also made this fall’s election different. Despite the removal of the tags, many incumbents still mentioned their status in the first 20 words of their candidate statement (which were visible regardless of whether or not a voter clicked on a candidate’s statement).

According to Kish, the inclusion of incumbent status in candidate statements was expected to happen.

“When we proposed that rule change, we were not trying to completely get rid of incumbent status from the ballot; what we were trying to do is get rid of this very unfair situation where there is no information available for candidates who are not incumbents. I was very happy with the result of that change, as each candidate [regardless of incumbent status] was given the same amount of words to provide information about themselves, regardless of what that information was,” Kish said.

However, junior and reelected senator Brian Adler believes that, although incumbent tags were removed, many candidates were still able to make their incumbent status obvious.

“I still think there’s a difference because you still have to read more words in a candidate’s statement even after you read the “incumbent”—you still see the next 19 words clearly—so, you still get more from an individual candidate than you would otherwise. But I still think it might hold an effect somewhat, but it was still clear that I was an incumbent if you took five seconds to read those 20 words,” he said.

This year, 19 candidates ran to fill 13 vacant Senate seats. Fourteen Treasury candidates ran to fill 14 vacant seats, each receiving a seat. Adler expressed concern about the lack of candidates running for Treasury seats this year.

“I think it is unfortunate that there was literally almost no competition for Treasury. It’s disappointing also because I know a lot of people wanted to see things changed, but there weren’t actually that many people running to see that change through,” Adler said.

Adler also believes that there was a lack of incentive for candidates running for ArtSci Council positions, as only three candidates ran for six positions. Each of those three candidates, junior Anthony Scales, who won president, freshman Havisha Pedamallu, who is the new vice president of administration and freshman Lexi Lampkin, newly elected vice president of programming, ran uncontested. The three other positions—vice president of academic outreach, vice president of finance and vice president of public relations—were filled by write-in candidates, with freshmen Jonah Thornton, Meris Saric and Sammy Schein, respectively, being elected.

The buildup to the election was marked by a controversy surrounding freshman candidate Gregg Adams, who posted discriminatory remarks in a group chat for incoming Washington University freshmen last year. These remarks ultimately caused Adams to withdraw his candidacy on Monday.

Some students, in discussing the election, used social media to attack Adams’ remarks. A since-deleted Facebook poll posted in the Washington University Class of 2021 group, for example, gave users the option of choosing between “Lyin Bigot Gregg Adams” and another option.

Many newly elected SU representatives, such as freshman and newly elected ArtSci Council vice president of programming Lexi Lampkin, enjoyed the election process.

“I liked showing my ideas to the student body and getting to talk to people about what they are interested in and [sharing] my ideas of how to make ArtSci Council better,” Lampkin said.

Adler, meanwhile, is looking forward to potential changes in the coming year.

“I’m really optimistic that we’re going to see some good action items and some improvements on things this coming semester. There are some really incredible student leaders in there who inspire me,” Adler said.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that 23.1 percent of students voted in last fall’s SU election, not 20 percent, as initially stated.