Second-term Senator Micheal Brown ’22 was elected Senate Chair at Tuesday’s Undergraduate Senate meeting, the first meeting of the new Undergraduate Senate following Friday’s Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections. Senator Danny Nguyen ’22 and Sochima Ezema ’23 were also elected to positions as Deputy Chair and Senate Secretary, respectively.

Senators voted unanimously to elect Brown as Senate chair over fellow returning Senator Mià Bahr ’22, the only other candidate for the position. In a short speech before the voting, Brown said he would focus on issues of racial and sexual violence. He also proposed reforms to the Senate’s advocacy and structure.

“I want to introduce … some operating principles … so that our ASSU is more robust and works more like an activist organization, rather than a political organization, rather than a political bureaucracy, which we’ve seen result in some inefficiencies,” Brown said.

In his Senate re-election platform, Brown said the Senate should focus on “practicing solidarity with marginalized communities” and producing legislation and policy recommendations. He also said he would establish a Senate committee to “thoroughly investigate and diagnosis [sic] structural weakness in the Constitution and By-Laws.” 

Nguyen, who previously served as Senate Secretary, was narrowly elected Deputy Chair over Michaela Phan ’23. Ezema, who had run unsuccessfully for Undergraduate Senate, ran unopposed for Senate Secretary at Tuesday’s meeting. Senate Secretary is an ex officio position that does not have voting power.

Elections for Appropriations Chair, Treasurer, Faculty Senate Representative, Parliamentarian and Communications Chair were not held in the interest of time and will be completed next week. According to Brown, Senator volunteers will run the Appropriations Committee in the interim period.

Contact Daniel Wu at dwu21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.