College first year Mert Kayabas was elected Class of 2028 president on Sept. 23 (Photo from Mert Kayabas).
Penn Student Government announced the results of the Class Board 2028 and Undergraduate Assembly elections on Monday morning.
College first year Mert Kayabas was elected Class of 2028 president with 456 votes — more than twice as many votes as runner-up and Wharton first year Joel Wang, who received 218 votes. College first year Eddie Mukalazi was elected executive vice president of the class with 370 votes.
Kayabas, who is also a former staffer for The Daily Pennsylvanian, said he is "excited" and "ready" to take on his new role.
"I think the people — my peers — trusted me to do a job, and … I'm going to execute [it]," Kayabas said.
The Class of 2028 elected College first year Chinmay Deshmukh as vice president of external affairs, College first year Leo Ding as vice president of internal affairs, and College first year Megan Chan as vice president of finance.
In addition to class board, Kayabas ran for the role of student representative in the Undergraduate Assembly, in which there were nine open seats to fill. With 370 votes, he received the most votes out of any student running. However, Kayabas told the DP he withdrew from that race after winning class president.
"I think it's the right thing to do for somebody else to have [the] opportunity to serve in student government, and also to devote all of my time to my role as president, instead of taking out a large chunk of my weekends to get my duties done as new student representative," Kayabas said. "So I just thought somebody else could have done better at the role right now and put more time into it."
College first years Eddie Mukalazi, Leo Ding, Khushi Patil, Megan Chan, Tanvi Deshmukh, Chinmay Deshmukh, Taya Allardice, and Aidan Shaughnessy — who is also a DP staffer — were elected as new student representatives on the UA. College first year Julia Axler, who came in 10th place in the election, received the position after Kayabas withdrew.
College first years Annabel Shic and Alejandra Picon were elected as the College class chairs, and Engineering first year Daniel Ranaudo was elected as the Engineering class chair. Running unopposed, Wharton first year Andreas Petropoulos was elected as Wharton class chair, and Nursing first year Jeongmi Ahn was elected as Nursing class chair.
College senior and Nominations and Elections Committee Chair Vincent Lepani highlighted the energy of this year's candidates and emphasized the importance of encouraging as many Penn undergraduates to vote as possible.
"It was really great to see all the candidates campaigning, really involved, and spreading their platforms," Lepani said.
Kayabas said that he looks forward to working with the people in the vice president positions and finding "a community [where] we work together to make other people happy."
"I feel like that's going to be super rewarding," Kayabas said.
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