With only a few weeks of college under their belts, 25 first-year students—the largest number ever—ran for five First Year Class Council positions. But for Student Union, the question is now how to keep the 20 students who were not elected involved in SU.

Last year, three or fewer students ran for each of the then-Freshman Class Council positions but president—eight candidates were in that race—while this year, at least four students ran for each position.

Although the losing candidates have expressed interest in the governing body, Student Union is unsure of how to keep students involved after they’ve lost elections.

Just over half of the first-year class voted in the election Tuesday, choosing freshmen Alanna Bader, Kendrick Rogers, Taylor Chen, Robert Landlord and Jake Bjork as First Year Class Council (FYCC) president, vice president of administration, vice president of finance, vice president of programming and vice president of public relations, respectively.

Student Union President Kenneth Sng said that the governing body tries to encourage students who might have done the SU pre-orientation program or who still want to be involved in SU to apply for other positions.

“That has always been something we’ve struggled with—like, how do you maintain a good relationship with people who didn’t win at elections because obviously the fact they ran meant that they were interested in the position and they probably had a lot of passion for being a class council president,” Sng said. “I think it’s about giving them alternative opportunities to get involved in SU.”

Sng added that some students might have run for vice presidential FYCC positions thinking that they would face minimal competition after seeing how few students ran last year.

“The president’s always oversubscribed—like five people run for the president. But the vice presidents, I think that had a tangible effect. I imagine, if I were a first-year student, I might be more inclined to run for, you know, VP Finance, thinking that I might only be running against one person. But when everyone thinks that way, we end up with a pool of like five people,” Sng said.

Bjork agreed that some students might have decided not to run for president because of this, but Landlord said he chose to run for VP Programming because he didn’t want the increased responsibility that comes with president.

“I already knew I didn’t want to be president because I wasn’t really up for that role right now. So I wanted to do something that would allow me to connect with everyone and plan stuff for everyone without having all the burden of being president, which is like everything,” Landlord said.

Chen said she decided to run after participating in the SU pre-orientation program and chose to run for VP Finance because it’s a potential career interest of hers.

“I also did the SU pre-o, so that was definitely a big factor in making me want to join, because my counselors were really awesome, and they really sold it to me,” Chen said. “I just think it’s a great way to combine my academic interests as well as giving back to Wash. U. and also enacting changes.”

The process for being appointed to other SU positions is competitive, however. Thirty students applied for four open Senate seats, while 43 students applied for six open Treasury spots. In order to accommodate more people, SU appointed five Treasury applicants to the Budget and Activities Committees. Another six Treasury applicants were appointed to the presidential debate funding team, as well as three Senate applicants.

But Sng said there are other branches of SU that might interest students who are not appointed to the positions they initially ran for.

“The nice thing about SU is we have so many branches fulfilling similar functions, not necessarily through the same body of people,” Sng said. “It’s always useful to have some entity we can point them toward after they don’t succeed at elections; I think that’s how we try to engage these students.”