Class of 2024 able to run for first time in upcoming Penn Student Government elections

First years will soon elect student government representatives for the first time as the Nominations & Elections Committee prepares to hold its second virtual general election.

The online elections, which are set to run from April 12 to April 14, will elect 28 student representatives to the Undergraduate Assembly, the student government body that distributes funding each year and advocates for student needs to administration, and 10 representatives to each Class Board, which provides social programming for each class.

This election will mark the first time that the Class of 2024 will be able to run for office after the NEC postponed the Class of 2024’s fall elections because students had not had a chance to be on campus or get to know one another.

The election will be held using the same rules that applied in the fall general election, College junior and NEC Vice Chair for Elections Zarina Iman said, some of which were implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a ban on monetary and in-person campaigning.

Candidates are typically able to spend up to $50 on their campaigns, but the NEC banned monetary campaigning in the fall because it did not want candidates' finances to affect their ability to run given the economic impacts of COVID-19.

The NEC will keep in place the 33% reduction in signature requirements to appear on the ballot that the NEC instituted in the fall, Iman said. The NEC implemented the rule after candidates found increased difficulty getting signatures virtually. Students running to be a 2023 College class chair, for example, were previously tasked with collecting 44 signatures from College sophomores and now only need 29 signatures.

“We just thought it'd be safer and more equitable for everyone,” Iman said.

A new addition to the campaigning rules includes an amendment to the Fair Practices Code, which will lay out how the NEC will deal with reports of bias by candidates. The amendment requires the NEC to report the incident to the Office of Student Affairs and fill out the University's Bias Incident Reporting Form. 

The rule change comes after the fall's general election, when candidate for 2023 Class Board Executive Vice President and College sophomore Dylan Conrad withdrew from the race after an anonymous GroupMe account shared screenshots of him using the N-word in a GroupMe message in September 2019.

In a letter to the Penn community attached to the general election results, the NEC wrote that while the group did not condone the use of the slur, the FPC did not have a provision to address the situation at the time.

Several first years expressed excitement that they will be able to run for student government positions this year.

College first year Daniela Uribe served on the UA this year as an associate member after learning that first years would not be able to run for elected seats. Associate members are unelected, non-voting members of the UA who are selected through an application process.

Although she has been able to work on the UA this year, Uribe said she wants to increase her involvement by becoming an elected member next year. 

“A lot of us associate members planned on running as first year representatives, but then that wasn't an option that was presented to us,” Uribe said.

Uribe said that while she is excited at the possibility of being an elected representative for her class with voting power, she plans to continue as an associate member if she is not elected. 

For other branches of Penn Student Government, including Class Board, the postponement of elections left a gap that students filled informally. In place of a Class Board, members of the Class of 2024, under the guidance of current PSG leaders, set up a Class of 2024 Committee that planned virtual social events and traditions like Econ Scream. The Committee was open to all first-year students, and did not require an application or election.

College first year Anooshey Ikhlas joined the Committee in her first semester, and is currently running for the College Chair seat on the 2024 Class Board. Ikhlas said that the enjoyment she felt while working on the Committee prompted her to run this spring, adding that she likely would not have run in the fall if elections had taken place then.

“I didn't want to be in an environment where I felt like I was meeting people just so that I could get a vote from them, but then personally I realized that I really liked this,” Ikhlas said.

Ikhlas said that even though the Class of 2024 has mostly gotten to know each other virtually, she has not had a hard time meeting the signature requirement to appear on the ballot.

Because this is the Class of 2024’s first election, Ikhlas encouraged her classmates to vote in the PSG elections this spring, particularly as the fall general election saw turnout decrease by nearly 50%.

“They're going to be on [Class Board] for the entire next year, so I think it's important to just vote,” Ikhlas said.