Junior biochemistry and women’s and gender studies student Devin Lobosco won the Undergraduate Student Government’s (USG) presidential election with 72% of the vote on Friday, April 7, in an election with nearly 20 candidates vying for executive council positions.
Lobosco ran unopposed. So did executive vice president-elect Nistha Boghra, who earned 75% of the votes. In both races, “no confidence” earned nearly 25%.
The USG election results were posted on the organization’s Instagram account shortly after polls closed on SBEngaged at noon on Friday. Initially, vote percentages were incorrectly recorded on the post; subsequent updates also had incorrect vote counts for the USG treasurer results. USG provided an accurate number of votes in their comments.
Amitesh Reddy Akiti, sophomore mathematics major and current at-large senator at USG, won treasurer with a plurality vote of 25%. Every executive council member aside from president and executive vice president was elected with less than 50% of the student body vote.
Akiti joins Arnav Sawant and Akaansha Kundra — or the “A.A.A.” group — in winning their respective executive council elections. Sawant will be the vice president of communications, and Kundra will be vice president of clubs and organizations. Their unofficial party has nearly 1,800 followers on Instagram and was a nod to last year’s “A.A.A” party when Sawant, Akiti and former at-large senator Ajay Singh all ran for USG Senate seats.
All 18 Senate candidates running in this year’s elections won in a technical default, with five vacant seats needing to be filled by president-elect Lobosco through an appointment process expected to begin this spring. Christian Jean-Pierre, a current at-large senator, received the most votes at 648. Senator Yuchen Zhang was re-elected with 559 votes. The other 16 candidates, including current at-large senators Peter Joyce, Jada Seto and Luca Rallis, received fewer than 500 votes each — less than 30% of the nearly 1,600 votes cast this year.
Notable races included the vice president of student life, where junior Isaiah Daniel beat sophomore Andrew Candio by only 15 votes, and vice president of academic affairs, which — after passing a referendum vote — will now be renamed to vice president of university affairs to better reflect the position’s duties. Junior Joe Bisani won the role over current at-large senator Daniel Canavin by a margin of 15%.
No candidate from the Helpfulness, Equity, Accessibility, Respect and Transparency (H.E.A.R.T.), or the Integrity, Visionary and Youthful (I.V.Y.) parties won executive council positions, while the “EXP+” party won four races: president, executive vice president, vice president of student life and vice president of university affairs.
In addition to candidate races, all five constitutional amendment referendums passed almost unanimously, winning between 95%-89% of the electorate. This included an amendment enforcing Senate and executive council procedural manuals. Now, elected USG members will have more accountability to attend weekly Senate meetings and properly update their time-cards.
Just over 1,500 votes were cast in this year’s elections. When accounting for the current enrollment of undergraduate students, only 9% of the undergraduate student population voted.
