Running on the candidate statement, “I am chubby. I am bubbly. I am happy,” Matthew Kim was elected president of Student Union’s First-Year Class Council Sept. 18, with 29 percent of the vote.

Kim’s vision of inclusion is shared by his four fellow council members, who were elected by the Class of 2022. Forty-five percent of the class voted, an 11 percentage point decrease from last year’s record-breaking voter turnout.

Graphic by Brandon Wilburn

The five council members have made it their mission to increase community engagement by reaching out to as many students as possible, ensuring that every student feels heard.

“What if you just went up to as many people as you could?” First-Year Class Council (FYCC) Vice President of Programming Pra Chati said. “Take maybe two to three hours of your day once a week and go into [Bear’s Den] and try to get as many opinions as you can, maybe 400, 500 kids, so that you can kind of formulate a general trend of what people want to see on campus and the changes that they want enacted.”

The council also stressed the importance of supporting clubs that have struggled to acquire proper funding and representation. Newly-elected VP of Finance Will Wang hopes to achieve this goal by reaching out to each club to discuss its financial situation.

“My goal for being VP of finance is to talk to people more and to really understand what my peers need,” Wang said.

Council members also hope to connect with their fellow students by planning events that will excite the community.

“The common misconception around programs that are school-related is that oftentimes they’re very boring, and then no one wants to actually go to them,” Chati said. “I want to get engaged with the entire student body and see what their interests are, rather than just plan some superficial activity that no one wants to come to.”

Chati hopes to involve his fellow students in the planning of events, thus “changing the way that school activities are thought of.”

The council also expressed their desire to create more unity within the Class of 2022 and the more general Washington University community.

“As a class right now and sort of as a school, I feel we’re not really united…We haven’t had many events that have been the full school or our full class. We had Bear Beginnings, but that was so overwhelming that you didn’t really get to meet that many people,” VP of Public Relations Lauren Neff said. “I think that through the events we want to plan and through our decisions that we’re going to make and meeting everyone, that we can help create more of a united class.”

The council is also eager to inspire social activism on campus.

“I think it’s important that we step into these positions with agendas to cause actual change, and then by doing that we just get more leadership experience in the world, which is something that is very invaluable,” said VP of Administration Jerome Nashed.

One cause the council plans to focus on is sexual assault on campus. Kim discussed ideas of possible activities to get students engaged in the topic, such as participating in “Denim Day,” a national event in April during which demonstrators wear denim in order to raise awareness about sexual assault, and providing platforms for students to anonymously share their stories.

“We don’t want just to have conversations going on. We want to actually do stuff that people will remember,” Kim said. “We’re here to do something very tangible.”