ASSU releases 2024 election results

April 29, 2024, 11:53 p.m.

Diego Kagurabadza ’25 and Divya Ganesan ’25 were elected president and vice president, along with a new cohort of Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and Graduate Student Council (GSC) members.

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Elections Commission released the preliminary election breakdown for the 2024 elections this Sunday on its Instagram and website. All candidates elected will serve in the 2024-2025 academic year.

The commission distributed a total of 16,947 ballots, with 5,604 ballots cast overall by both graduate and undergraduate students, leading to a voter turnout of 33.07% (27.00% and 40.60% respectively). The overall voter turnout is higher than last year’s 24.72%, but still lower than the voter turnout of 36.64% in 2020.

All senators, executives and class presidents were approved by a simple majority vote. All undergraduate annual grants, graduate annual grants, ballots and jointly annual grants, such as the divestment and quorum resolutions were passed by a majority.

Executives 

With a focus on academics, social life, campus life and transportation, Kagurabadza and Ganesan’s campaign won by a large margin of 2,663 votes, gaining a majority victory. They ran uncontested.

Both executives have had previous experience in ASSU, as Kagurabadza served as UGS chair from 2023 to 2024 while Ganesan served as UGS Faculty Senate representative from 2023 to 2024.

Undergraduate Senate 

From a 28-candidate race in the 26th Undergraduate Senate (UGS), 15 students were selected to represent the undergraduate body this term. Ivy Chen ’26, Lizbeth Hernandez Rios ’25, David Sengthay ’26 — all candidates in the upper-class division — earned the most votes. In the under-class division, Ethan Alfonso ’27, Viviana Chuquijajas ’26 and Gordon Allen ’26 earned the most votes. All undergraduate students were eligible to vote in this category.

Class Presidents 

In the race for class presidents, students voted according to their class status.

In the race for sophomore class president, team PULSE won a four-way race with a total of 53.64% of vote share over second-place candidate TEAM AVATAR with a total vote share of 25.06%. The winning team consists of Nika Farokhzad ’27, Sofia Irlando ’27, Roome Becker ’27, Madhav Prakash ’27 and Justin Yang ’27. Their platform focused on gaining more advocacy and voice within the Undergraduate Senate and “revitalizing class spirit.” 

L.I.F.T won re-election for junior class president with 88.14% of vote share, running uncontested. The winning slate consists of Pierre Dagsi ’26, Gabby Edelin ’26, Aili McGregor ’26 and Matthew Guck ’26 and the platform sought to use “every cent of [the budget] to fuel fun activities and exciting events”. 

For the senior class president election, RISE also won the election uncontested with a supermajority of 86.59% votes. The slate consisted of Shreya Ramachandran ’25, Blaine Wells ’25, Jason Lin ’25 and Daniel Mottesi ’25. They have not yet provided any information on their platform this year in the election handbook. 

Graduate Student Council 

All graduate students voted to elect six at-large Graduate Student Council (GSC) members. The remaining nine council members were selected based on a plurality voting process, in which the GSC was divided into “districts.” The districts were broken down by graduate schools and disciplines:  Graduate School of Business, Doerr School of Sustainability, Graduate School of Education, School of Humanities and Sciences — Natural Sciences, Law and Medicine districts.

Aside from the School of Engineering with two candidates elected from different departments, all other districts have elected one representative in the GSC. The six candidates selected at large include three masters students: Brian Liu M.S. ’25, Casey Chan M.S. ’25 and Pamela Andrea Martinez Barrera MFA ’25. The remaining three are Ph.D students from several disciplines: second-year Ph.D. student in physics Sephora Ruppert, second-year Ph.D. student in math Andy Yin and second-year Ph.D. student in computer science Áron Ricardo Perez-Lopez, who is a desk editor for The Daily.

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