The Student Government Association announced its 2024-25 first-year election winners on Tuesday evening after three days of voting. The voter turnout rate was 37% higher than last year.
Fiona Shen ’28 and Matthew Chen ’28 will serve as Class Coordinating Board president and vice president, respectively. Ben Hader ’28 was elected CCB first-year secretary, and Luca Feng ’28 will become the first-year treasurer. Crystal Wu ’28 will be the first-year public relations officer, and Soliyana Belay ’28 was elected the first-year communications officer.
Brandon Kim ’28 and Meruka Vyas ’28 were elected as the two first-year representatives for the Undergraduate Council of Students. For the Undergraduate Finance Board, Grace Zhong ’28 and Sylvan Maggiotto ’28 will serve as first-year representatives.
This year, 801 first-years — approximately 46% of the class — voted in the elections, according to Ethan Davis ’25, SGA’s elections chair. Last year, only 580 first-year students cast their ballots.
Davis attributed the higher turnout to candidates’ eagerness to campaign and SGA’s outreach efforts.
The three branches of SGA used two different voting methods. CCB’s election used ranked-choice voting, while UCS and UFB let voters select their top two candidates. Two co-equal positions were available in UCS and UFB while CCB offered several different positions. In previous years, all three branches used ranked-choice voting.
The voting systems were changed because ranked-choice voting was “needlessly convoluted,” Davis said.
Shen received 29.7% of initial first-choice votes for CCB president. After ranked-choice votes were taken into account, Shen won the election with 40% of the vote. Chen received 50.3% of the initial first-choice votes cast for CCB vice president.
According to Davis, four students ran for the two UCS first-year representative positions, while eight people ran for the two positions available on UFB. A total of 17 students ran for the six available CCB positions.
Campaigning was “exciting and energizing,” wrote Maggiotto in an email to The Herald. He noted that he particularly enjoyed meeting first-years he didn’t yet know.
Maggiotto — who plans to study environmental engineering — said he hopes to “bring a different perspective to new budget requests that clubs pitch to (UFB), encouraging student groups to stay cognizant of the environmental impacts of their activities.”
Vyas, one of the elected UCS first-year representatives, said he had never campaigned for a position before.
“My main focus was just to create a project or to create a campaign around things that are very personal to me, and, at the same time … important for everyone else as well,” Vyas said.
Kim, the other elected UCS first-year representative, has been involved in student government in some capacity for the last five years. While campaigning, Kim said he focused on meeting with students face-to-face to advertise his platform.
Davis said that, despite this being his first year as elections chair, he was surprised by how smoothly everything went.
“From what I’ve heard, there’s usually at least one little kerfuffle,” he said. This year, there was nothing of the sort.
Leah Koritz is a senior staff writer covering student government beat. Leah is from Dover, Massachusetts and studies Public Health and Judaic Studies. In her free time, Leah enjoys hiking, watching the Red Sox and playing with her dog, Boba.
