The Williams Students Union (WSU) announced the results of its spring semester elections on Saturday. The student body elected three representatives of each class to serve semester-long terms. Six new representatives were elected, joining six incumbents.
This semester’s representatives will be Emerald Dar ’26, Charlie Maier ’26, Dylan Safai ’26, Tatum Leuenberger ’27, Michael Okpoti ’27, Osegie Osayimwen ’27, Ben Elbaz ’28, Charles Hughes ’28, Ahmad Irfan ’28, Robby Gray ’29, Sahil Sajid ’29, and Annabel Smith ’29. Dar, Maier, Osayimwen, Elbaz, Gray, and Sajid are new WSU members.
Of 2,280 eligible voters, 597 cast votes, representing a turnout of 26.1 percent. This is the highest turnout for a spring election since spring 2023, but a decrease of 4.8 points from the fall. First-year students led in turnout: 236 first-years voted, compared to 144 sophomores, 76 juniors, and 141 seniors. Off-cycle students rounded their class years up for voting purposes.
“This semester is a period of change,” Safai, a seven-term member of WSU, told the Record. “We have six new members. This is the largest turnover of any election in the past.”
Elected representatives act as liaisons between the student body and the College administration. In furthering this goal, WSU representatives table three times per week in Paresky, an initiative that began last semester. This spring, WSU plans to expand this effort to Driscoll and Eco Cafe.
Safai, who co-chaired WSU last semester, hopes to broaden WSU’s reach by meeting with a wide array of student groups. “We’re planning to have meetings monthly with MinCo [the Minority Coalition], a cappella groups, transfer students more broadly, and international students, amongst others,” Safai said.
WSU representatives told the Record that they hope to tackle a range of issues this spring.
Maier, who officially ran this spring after a late write-in effort in the fall, hopes that WSU and the College can partner on events to create a more cohesive campus community. “I visited friends at other universities in the fall, and I was surprised to see how their schools worked to bring people out of the boxes of their sports teams, fraternities, and other groups,” Maier told the Record. “This year, Fairfield University took this large student-run event called SantaCon that became a mess and made it an organized, school-sanctioned thing with a DJ, food trucks, and an open bar for people over 21. Williams could do that for something like Sensations.”
Returning WSU first-year representative Smith is planning to extend student life initiatives that WSU began during her first term. “In the fall semester, we got coffee in Sawyer on Sundays from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. and I want to continue things like that,” she said. Smith also mentioned other ideas from WSU’s first meeting of the semester, such as a spring Mountain Day and involving students in the selection of Claiming Williams Day speakers.
WSU members hope to address less visible issues as well. “There were egregious changes made to the Honor and Discipline Committee over the summer,” Safai said. “Students lost the ability to vote for their representatives, and, as a body, we want to address that and bring back student representation.”
Maier said he hopes to change the College’s spending priorities. “I think we spend a lot of money on redundant administrative roles, to the point where it’s taking funding from other places,” he said. “I’m a big fan of [President Maud S. Mandel’s] On the Log initiative, and I want Williams’ focus to be on the three groups that students interact with on a daily basis: faculty, dining hall workers, and facilities and grounds.”
Safai emphasized that no matter what initiatives WSU chooses to pursue, the student body’s votes have shown new confidence and put the union in a strong position. “We had our highest turnout ever last fall and some of our highest this spring,” he said. “I think that’s a testament to how much we’ve grown as WSU during this past year.”
Editor’s note: Ahmad Irfan, an arts editor for the Record and WSU representative, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
