This spring’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) election will take place virtually from 9 a.m. on April 20 through 4 p.m. on April 24. Students can cast their ballots for the executive slate—president and executive vice president—as well as various Executive Cabinet and College Council (CC) class representative positions. The Maroon spoke with the candidates running for president and executive vice president about their platforms.
CORE Collective
The CORE Collective slate is led by CC Vice Chair Kevin Guo and Class of 2029 Representative Aaron Horowitz.
The slate also includes Class of 2028 Representatives Destiney Samare and Aidan Keesler, Class of 2029 Representative Audrey Krajewski, and third-year Yero Diamanka.
Guo said the slate aims to make USG more “active” and to push for “ambitious but realistic” change.
“I think Cabinet has not necessarily been an extremely active organization in terms of advocacy, in terms of internal oversight, just on every feasible measure,” he said. “I want to turn the cabinet into an active organization.” He added that the CORE slate is composed of “some of the most active people in Student Government,” which he argued would allow them to help change the culture of USG.
“I am really proud of the track record that all members [of our slate] have,” Horowitz said.
The Collective has emphasized advocacy for an option to use Maroon Dollars to pay for laundry in residence halls. Horowitz, who wrote a resolution passed by CC in January calling for the change, said he has been in regular contact with administrators about potential implementation of the policy.
Guo added that the CORE Collective slate would advocate for an increase in budget from the University to allow USG to distribute more funding to RSOs. USG’s budget has increased by just two percent in the past three years, while the requests Student Government Funding Committee (SGFC) receives from RSOs have more than doubled in the same time frame, Guo said.
“Student Government historically has never advocated for an increase in its budget, and even last year, when it tried a little bit, it never even came up with a specific number,” Guo said. “I want to advocate as hard as we can.”
Guo also emphasized the importance of transparency in USG finances. College Council passed the CLEAR Act—cosponsored by both Guo and Horowitz—earlier this quarter, requiring SGFC to disclose how funds are allocated to individual RSOs. But Guo said the “infrastructure” needed to implement the CLEAR Act has not yet been built.
“We’ve heard other candidates this election cycle saying they want to publish the budget on day one. The reason that’s not feasible is because that system for actually collecting data, for collecting expenditures across all the different areas of student government, is not set in place,” Guo said. “I will use my position as president to set that system in place and to release the first-ever annual transparency report this year.”
The slate has also promised to push for making course syllabi available before the pre-registration process, allowing RSOs to secure uchicago.edu email addresses, and expanding sexual assault awareness and prevention efforts.
“None of our proposals are particularly outlandish, which is very intentional in that we want to actually do things,” Guo said. “We want to actually deliver on the promises we’re making.”
Ida Noyes Party
The Ida Noyes Party slate is led by third-years Daniel de Beer, running for president, and Vaani Kapoor, running for executive vice president. The slate also includes incumbent VP of Advocacy Andrea Pita Mendez and third-years Kate Vercellino, Faris Lovejoy, and Cecilia Merloni.
De Beer told the Maroon the party wants to “transform USG from [a] bylaws- and resolutions-based organization to an outcomes-based organization that’s able to get stuff done”—and to “save the Pub.”
Last month, University President Paul Alivisatos announced a $50 million donation from Board of Trustees Chair David Rubenstein to renovate Ida Noyes Hall, which houses the Pub, a private bar serving University affiliates that is owned and operated by the family that runs Medici on 57th. The timeline and extent of the renovations are unclear. A University spokesperson told the Maroon that there were “no plans to move the Pub,” but that “some spaces [in Ida Noyes] will need to be relocated during the renovations.”
“Renovations could start after we even leave,” de Beer said. “What we want to do is ensure that when those renovations start, whenever that is, that there is a temporary Pub.”
Obtaining a liquor license is one barrier to setting up a temporary pub, according to de Beer, who suggested that USG partner with a Hyde Park business that already has one. He also emphasized the challenge of finding an available space on campus and said that his slate had not yet narrowed down a specific location to propose. “I’m confident that in a year’s time we can have the proper plan,” de Beer said.
De Beer, who has not previously served on USG, said his inexperience gives him a valuable outside perspective. “There’s a lot that I don’t have to unlearn about how USG is currently run,” he said.
Kapoor served on CC last year but did not run again this year. “I felt like I just did a year of just sitting in meetings and debating small nuances in bylaws or little issues rather than trying to actually work towards advocating for student voices, which is something that we want to prioritize,” she said.
The slate also proposed creating a Sidechat community where students can submit concerns for weekly discussion by USG. “If you have an issue, you don’t have to go all the way to a USG meeting or schedule office hours with someone,” de Beer said. “You can just voice your opinion straight from your phone.”
De Beer also said the party would push to open up classrooms for student use outside of scheduled class time.
RSOs and other groups that receive funding from the Student Engagement Fund can reserve designated student spaces. CC introduced a resolution earlier this year that would have allowed non-registered student groups to reserve spaces via USG, but it failed to pass due to liability and implementation concerns.
The slate also aims to increase student input in the University artificial intelligence policy by establishing a new committee comprised of students, faculty, and administration. “Most committees that meet at UChicago to determine how AI policies are written or what the approach on education and AI [should be] mostly consist of professors and academics,” de Beer said. “There’s sort of a lack of student opinion and input there.”
Premium Party
Second-years Grace Beatty and Esther Ma are running for president and executive vice president, respectively, under the Premium Party banner. Both currently serve on CC.
Beatty chairs the Program Coordinating Council (PCC), a USG committee that funds performance groups and other RSOs that provide large-scale programming for students, as well as serving on SGFC. Ma serves on the Health and Wellness Committee. The pair emphasized that their USG experience differentiates them from other candidates.
“We have a lot of experience in USG, which I think is really valuable, especially in an organization like Student Government where there’s many processes [and] many people that you have to understand,” Beatty said.
If elected, Beatty and Ma said they would make the RSO funding process more flexible.
SGFC currently allocates funding to RSOs for specific purposes rather than allowing them to decide how to use their budgets. Beatty and Ma hope to give RSOs more agency over their spending by providing fixed budgets—which other funding committees give to large RSOs already—instead of filling funding requests on a case-by-case basis.
“If we give someone $100 and they want to spend $90 of it on food… that might not be the greatest decision, but if food is really important for you, you make that decision, versus [SGFC] saying, ‘You can only spend $12 on food per person,’ et cetera,” Beatty said.
They also promised to create an online funding calculator to help RSOs estimate the allocations they will receive, adding that they would work with students to design the calculator.
Beatty and Ma also hope to provide free printing services and exam blue books for students across campus as well as stock menstrual products in campus bathrooms using existing USG funding and administrative support. UChicago Student Wellness maintains a list of locations that currently distribute free menstrual products, including Ida Noyes, the Harper Center, and Regenstein Library. Previous iterations of this program were implemented in 2017 and 2023 with varying degrees of success.
“I think our role is to say, ‘These are things that the University should be doing for its students,’” Beatty said.
Beatty and Ma said they would advocate for extending the Reading Period and requiring lecture recordings be provided to students for all classes. “A lot of classrooms actually come equipped with recording equipment in the classroom… not to use it, I think, is kind of a waste,” Ma said. The pair did not provide details on how an extended Reading Period could be implemented.
New Generation Party
Third-years Will Moller and Marcus Borden are running for president and executive vice president, respectively, at the head of the New Generation Party. The slate also includes third-years Luca Propper-Bowring, Evan Winik, and Owen Yingling, as well as first-year Allie Shepard.
Moller cited a gap year he took between his second and third years, when he spent time at several other college campuses, as the motivation for his campaign. “It convinced me that the University of Chicago has the best [culture]… and our reputation, sadly, reflects an old generation of Chicago where fun goes to die,” he said.
Moller said he hopes to change that reputation through new USG policies. “What I see is a new generation of Chicago students who still work hard but want to have community and do really cool things after they graduate,” he said. “And I thought, ‘To usher in that new generation, what do we need?’ We need [a] stronger campus community, and we need access to better opportunities after we graduate. All of our [slate’s] policies do those two things.”
The slate wants to work with Career Advancement to collect more information from alumni and develop search filters in a renovation of the University’s alumni database. “At Stanford, [University of Pennsylvania] Wharton, and even some high schools, you can really find the alumni you need,” Moller said. “[Career Advancement is] open to us putting computer science students and a little bit of the USG budget into revamping the user interface.”
They also plan to utilize the student body to create more networking opportunities for students by establishing a committee to share students’ personal connections with Career Advancement. “In doing so, we [would] basically turn all [7,500] undergraduates into scouts for Career Advancement,” Moller said.
The slate also plans to offer stipends to RSOs for events or parties, with the condition that the RSO must invite the entire student body. “There’s a barrier to going out. It’s very easy to just spend all your time in the Reg,” Moller said. “The purpose of this stipend will be to reduce friction for those people.” SGFC currently requires that events it funds be open to all students.
The slate also hopes to run shuttles to take students downtown on weekend nights, which Moller said would cost $53,000 per year, “about 10 percent of the budget for the Program Coordinating [Council],” Moller said. “That committee is in charge of programs that usually involve travel, so we think it best fits in there.” The PCC is responsible for allocating funding to RSOs that organize programming and performances for students.
The New Generation Party created a website demo to preview their policies. The website features a live budget, event planning, an event board, a live shuttle map, and an alumni network. All content displayed on the website is “fictional” and “for demonstration purposes only,” according to a disclaimer on the site.
Editor’s note: Grace Beatty and Aaron Horowitz, candidates for USG president and executive vice president, respectively, are staff members of the Maroon. They had no involvement in the reporting or editing of this story.
