Thrive was elected Student Government (SG)’s next executive slate on Friday, April 23, as the spring 2021 elections came to a close. Third-years Parul Kumar, Murphy DePompei, and Natalie Wang ran for president, vice president for administration, and vice president for student affairs, respectively. They will assume office on June 13.
Thrive, which ran unopposed, received a total of 1,107 votes from the student body. There were 781 abstentions, while write-in slates received a combined 57 votes.
“We are honored and thrilled to formally accept the position of Student Government Executive Slate. In the past week, we have had the pleasure of speaking with so many wonderful students and we cannot wait to continue these conversations,” Thrive wrote in a statement shared with The Maroon.
The ballot for this year’s election also included a referendum on splitting SG into a separate Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and Graduate Council (GC), intended to improve internal coordination and student representation. From the spring 2022 election onward, candidates would form a two-person slate consisting of a president and College Council (CC) chair, with an executive vice president appointed by CC.
The vote passed with 1,291 voting yes, 149 voting no, and 405 abstaining. The result means that on June 21, the first day of summer quarter, DePompei will become CC chair and Wang will become the executive vice president for external affairs, a temporary role created for the 2021–22 academic year. Kumar’s title will not change. Thrive encouraged voters to vote “yes” on the referendum and, in its written statement, reiterated its support for the referendum after it passed.
Meanwhile, Grace Schlesinger, a first-year M.B.A. candidate at the Booth School of Business, was elected graduate liaison to the Board of Trustees with 668 votes, 487 of which came from Booth. Schlesinger defeated Alex Levi, the outgoing SG vice president for administration, who campaigned on a platform of disbanding the Board of Trustees. Schlesinger was endorsed by the outgoing co-presidents of GC, Kimberly Liu and Rohail Premjee, and by Steven Wendeborn, the outgoing graduate liaison to the Board of Trustees.
The sole official candidate for undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees, third-year David Liang, was elected with 539 votes. The remaining 391 voters abstained or wrote in candidates.
With the passage of the referendum, CC will be expanded to include five representatives for each class, meaning that Isabel O’Malley-Krohn, Allen Abbott, John Fuentes, Alex Vinarov, and Harry Gardner will be the CC representatives for the Class of 2022.
From the Class of 2023, returning members Tyler Okeke, Bianca Simons, Summer Long, and Parv Golwelkar will be joined on CC by Ángel Rosales. From the Class of 2024, Connor Lee, Ash Arian, Jefferson Lind, Evelyn Li, and Julia Brestovitskiy were the five candidates with the highest number of votes.
No candidate officially declared to run for community and government liaison, meaning the election results were decided by write-in votes. Brestovitskiy received at least 53 write-in votes, the most of any student, and will have to decide whether to accept the role of community and government liaison or CC representative.
If Brestovitskiy chooses to remain on CC, first-year Jack LeGrow would be next in line for community and government liaison, having received at least 22 write-in votes. If Brestovitskiy chooses to become community and government liaison, Darya Foroohar will become the fifth CC representative for the Class of 2024.
There were 486 first-years, 166 second-years, 224 third-years, and 50 fourth-years casting ballots this year. According to SG historian Abbott, Thrive’s total of 1,107 votes is the highest number of votes accumulated by an unopposed slate in SG history. The referendum also passed by the largest percentage in SG history, with 89.65 percent voting affirmatively.
The full statement from Thrive can be found below.
