Wharton first year Vedika Jawa edges by 9 others in packed class board presidential race

Penn Student Government announced the results of elections to Class Board 2026 and Undergraduate Assembly Tuesday night.

Wharton first year Vedika Jawa will serve as president of Class Board 2026. She received 190 votes — 39 more than runner-up College first year Ryan Schager. College first year Juan Lopez won the race for executive vice president, securing 237 votes to defeat runner-up College first year Isaac Tang’s 195 votes.

One of Jawa’s major influences in running for president, she said, was her older brother, 2021 Wharton and Engineering graduate Moksh Jawa, who served as Class Board 2021 president during his first year. 

“Seeing him serve as class board president, I was able to see a lot of the experiences he was able to be part of, and seeing him lead the class and have such a great time,” Jawa told The Daily Pennsylvanian. “[It] made me more interested in student government.”

Jawa secured her position on Class Board 2026 among a competitive field of 10 candidates. She told the DP that she hopes to make all first years comfortable at Penn by creating a “welcoming and fun” environment at class traditions and events.

“I wanted everyone to feel like Penn was their home,” Jawa said.

Filling the Class Board 2026’s vice president positions will be Wharton first year Tiana Wang, who was elected vice president of finance; College first year Jeongmin Lee, who was elected vice president of internal affairs; and Wharton first year Michelle Chen, who was elected vice president of external affairs. 

College first year Eric Lee was the sole candidate for Class Board 2026’s two College class chairs. Engineering sophomore and Nominations & Elections Committee Vice Chair of Elections Yousef Elyoussef told the DP that there will be a special election to fill the vacant position, with information to be released soon. 

Wharton first year Akash George will serve as Wharton class chair, Engineering first year Faraz Rahman will serve as Engineering class chair, and Nursing first year Ellie Mayers will serve as Nursing class chair.

The eight new student representative seats on the UA will be filled by Chen, Lee, Lopez, Wang, Wharton first year Martina Bulgarelli, College first year August Crane, College first year Jaideep Grewal, and College first year Abhay Srivastava. Elyoussef said that the new transfer student representative will be elected during the transfer student elections, which are set to take place this upcoming Thursday through Sunday.

This year, 935 students voted in the Class Board 2026 presidential race, down slightly from last year’s turnout of 970. Turnout has not yet returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, when 1,160 votes were cast in the 2019 new student elections — the last election held before the pandemic.

Elyoussef said that the NEC worked with multiple cultural and socioeconomic groups on campus to encourage first years to run for student government, using classwide emails, GroupMe chats, and social media to publicize the election. He added that the NEC believes the election season went well overall. 

“We definitely think that this election has done a lot better than previous years just because we were able to work with other branches [of] student government to make sure that the election was fair and appropriate, and that it happened in a timely manner,” Elyoussef said. “A lot of our candidates campaigned very well.”