Courtesy of Krupa Desai

From left, Jimmy Kimmel, sophomores Dan Feinberg, Caitlin Lee and Maddie Welsh, and Chelsea Clinton pose onstage at the Closing Plenary Session of the Clinton Global Initiative University conference in Tempe, Ariz. Feinberg, Lee and Welsh were named the winners of the CGI U Bracket Challenge Saturday evening for their service project “Stay in Touch” and were honored onstage at the conclusion of the conference’s festivities.

The competition is between the Elevate! slate led by junior and former Social Programming Board President Emma Tyler and the Connection slate, led by Junior Class Council President Will Ralls.

While the typically competitive race for senior class council is uncontested this year, Election Commissioner and junior Jodi Small is focusing on the increased competition for the top seats in Washington University’s student government, which she sees as beneficial for the election process.

“It’s great the [SU exec] election is contested since that hasn’t been true in the past,” Small said. “It’s the most powerful position, so it’s important to see the best candidate will win.”

Tyler, running for Student Union President with the Elevate! slate, voiced hope that the competition for SU exec signals increasing interest in student government. She believes her slate’s platform combines new, creative solutions with simple ideas that will help students on campus.

“Our slate framed our platform on what we thought were the three biggest issues we’d like to tackle: accessibility, transparency and engagement,” Tyler said. “We have a combination of innovative new ideas like phasing out the slate system or allowing students to bring ideas in directly and basic things like better publicity of SU initiatives and elections.”

Ralls, running for president of Student Union with the Connection slate, believes his slate includes candidates with more diverse experience from outside SU, which could help the government’s ability to reach out to more people.

“If you look at [the Elevate!] slate, they have people with SU experience, but my slate has a lot of Wash. U. experience,” Ralls said. “We’re looking to cover a lot more of campus. There’s not a strong connection between SU and the student body.”

In addition to the two five-member slates running for exec, 11 students are running for 10 Treasury representative seats, and some Senate elections are also contested—three students are running for six Arts & Sciences seats and two business students are running for one seat, though all other races have an equal number of candidates and seats.

Meanwhile Sophomore, Junior and Senior Class Council candidates are all running unopposed.

The Olin Business Council is also a part of the election, but most positions are uncontested. The vice president of marketing and communications position and the sophomore class representative are the only positions with two people running. There are no candidates running for the vice president of human resources, and the only students running for class representatives are in the class of 2017.

Elections will take place online from Wednesday to Thursday. Small noted that turnout is highly dependent on the candidates’ ability to reach out to students.

“Last spring, 20 percent of the school voted for most of the races; 35 percent voted for Senior Class Council on that election—I’m hoping those numbers go up, but usually it’s pretty consistent from year to year,” Small said. “The most important thing is word of mouth and the candidates reaching out.”