For some students at the College, the Williams Student Union (WSU) might seem like a decades-old institution. But this student government structure has only existed for five years.
As a seven-term representative and current co-president of WSU, Dylan Safai ’26 has been a part of the organization for most of its existence. He and the other leaders have worked to improve the group’s efficacy and reputation, but they say they still have a long way to go. “Last semester we passed 11 different amendments to our constitution,” Safai said. “We started to run a lot better, but there’s still room for improvement.”
Five years ago this week, students voted to dissolve the College Council (CC), the former student government of the College, and implement the Three Pillars Plan, which was designed to divide the functions of CC into three elected student bodies. These three pillars are the Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST), The Advisory Board for Lobbying and Elections, and WSU, a student advocacy body that aimed to uplift and advocate for student voices. On the fifth anniversary of its founding, the Record explored WSU’s history and its impact on student life.
Former CC Vice President for Student Organizations Maria Fernanda Brady ’20 said that she was hesitant to vote for the Three Pillars Plan, and felt CC dissolved because students were alienated by the student government. “I don’t think people truly understood the reason student government existed, [and] this in part was due to many not having served or engaged with student government throughout their time on campus,” Brady said. “They felt like the way to regain control was by dissolving a structure that was old and antiquated.”
Following a series of destabilizing events in 2019 and early in 2020, public approval of CC rapidly declined, according to Brady. Students voiced concerns over racially biased funding distribution, the rejection of the proposed RSO Williams Initiative for Israel, and a highly publicized investigation into the conduct of CC’s treasurer. Many students blamed CC’s centralized and unchecked power for these issues, causing 80.5 percent of student voters to support the more decentralized Three Pillars Plan, as the Record reported in 2020.
Less than a month after the vote, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most student activities on campus, which delayed the installment of the three new governing bodies.
In its early years, the Three Pillars faced continued challenges. At first, WSU struggled with meeting attendance and organizational transparency, according to Safai. “When these Three Pillars were formed, they were formed with a lot of optimism for the future,” Safai said. However, this optimism didn’t translate into student trust in WSU’s leadership. “There was no oversight, no accountability measures,” Safai said.
Safai noted that student perception of WSU was poor early in its existence. “Our approval rating was at a dismal 18 percent,” in the fall of 2021, he said.
While former WSU representative Wes Morrison ’26 pointed to structural issues with CC, he said that WSU’s new system came with its own problems. “In a way, the effort to make the system more egalitarian disempowered it relative to the administration,” he said.
Morrison ultimately decided not to seek re-election after studying abroad his junior year. “I felt like I didn’t do much while I was on WSU,” he said. “Coming back to campus, I thought, ‘You know what? I’ve made more impact in other areas on this campus, in more specific settings.’”
Throughout his time on WSU, Safai said that the organization has addressed many of its shortcomings through structural reform. “We finally have agendas every meeting,” he said. “We have follow-through. We have newsletters that come out twice a semester now. Our Instagram is active, our website is active.” At the beginning of last semester, WSU amended its constitution to include formal leadership roles within the 12-person council, including co-presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and an archivist.
As of this fall, WSU had a 46 percent student approval rating according to the Record’s annual survey, up 28 points from its inaugural rating in 2021. According to Safai, this jump in approval can be attributed to WSU’s student-facing policies — their advocacy is behind Snar’s instatement as a permanent late-night option, free laundry for students, and Sunday evening coffee in Sawyer.
This semester’s election marked WSU’s highest-ever turnover, with six new candidates elected, and the organization’s highest spring semester voter turnout — 26.1 percent — since 2023.
Despite this progress, Morrison and others believe that there is still more to be done to legitimize WSU. Morrison said that low voter turnout — including the 26.1 percent high-water mark from this spring — lowers engagement rates with the organization and lessens WSU’s perceived representation of students, even if voting rates have been steadily rising over time.
Morrison said that the next five years should serve as a time for WSU to make its purpose clearer to students. “I think it will strengthen the legitimacy of the organization to administrators and to students,” Morrison said. “That’s my hope.”
