News | Student Union
Candidates file for SU elections
Forty-eight students formally entered the race for Student Union elections yesterday.
The election will fill positions on SU’s executive board, 10 seats each in Senate and Treasury, as well as Olin Business Council and sophomore, junior and senior class councils.
The race for SU president is uncontested, and no candidates are running to be SU’s vice president of public relations. Seven students are running for 10 seats in Senate, and 17 are running for 10 seats in the Treasury.
Senior Achint Rai, SU’s election commissioner, said that having a large number of candidates running is “really good.”
“I think that having [48] candidates running for different positions, obviously some of them are going to be contested,” Rai said. “Hopefully, if there are more contested positions what I hope to see is more campaigning and more publicizing of one’s opinions and the voice they’re trying to project out.”
According to Rai, SU implemented new election rules this semester to provide candidates with more access to promotional resources for their campaigns.
“Whether that be a certain amount of printing, in color printing [or] black and white printing, certain amounts of photography sessions with [the] SU [public relations] team, those resources I hope will help candidates publicize their events more,” Rai said.
Sophomore Nia Plump plans to run to be SU’s vice president of administration. Plump said that she wants more unity within Student Union.
“There are individual projects that connect to larger pieces a lot of the times. I feel like sometimes we overlap, and it gets kind of redundant; and other times, there are specific students that slip through the cracks and are very much underrepresented,” Plump said. “I’m very much focused on equity and not perpetuating cycles of inequity within Student Union because we have a unique position as Wash. U. students…maybe we can’t solve world issues in real life politically, but we can do small things here to make every student’s experience better on campus.”
Sophomore Randal Walker filed her candidacy to be SU’s vice president of programming.
“I’m still in Senate right now; so, I think I’m just forwarding my advocacy work to a higher level of SU. And so, it’s keeping that same momentum, same agenda,” Walker said. “I hope to keep marginalized communities more involved in programming, that is, through SU, because I feel like, in the past, they’re not really listened to, and I just plan to make it a more approachable position.”
Sophomore Jillian Shah is running to be Junior Class Council’s VP of administration after having served in the same position for both the freshman and sophomore class councils.
“I really enjoyed the position, and I think it’s super fun to help program for our class as a whole because I do believe that there is value in bringing people together that you love; so, that’s one of the reasons,” Shah said. “Another reason is that I just love helping to program, just a great group of people you get to know on council.”
Rai hopes that the block funding on the ballot will increase voter turnout for the election and has plans to increase voter engagement.
“Those organizations have their budgets at stake; so, I know that even if people aren’t coming out for the actual SU elections, that’s something that will draw them for sure because I know those organizations will at least rally for their petitions,” Rai said. “I also think, in terms of measures to get people to vote, one of the things I made a mistake on last semester was…not utilizing my own resources so going through the RA pathway, going through the WUSA pathway reaching out more to the younger sort of constituents…to vote and be more engaged in this election.”
SU will host a forum for the candidates March 3 at 7 p.m. before the election March 5.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that no candidates are running for the position of vice president of public relations.