After weeks of campaigning to clinch a seat on the Student Assembly, four newly elected freshmen and one transfer representative have joined the S.A.
This year’s election saw nine candidates run for four freshman representative seats and two candidates run for one transfer representative seat. Pedro Da Silveira ’25, Andrew Juan ’25, Luna Lu ’25 and Michelle Song ’25 are the new freshman representatives — who received 414, 410, 403 and 466 votes, respectively. Joane Kim ’24 won the transfer seat with 83 votes.
Five other candidates ran for the freshman representative position — 1,112 out of 3,729 eligible voters cast their ballot in the election, yielding a 29.82 percent turnout rate.
Jeffrey Huang ’25, Sammie Lambourne ’25, Jefelyn Naula ’25, Aidan Solomon ’25, Joaquin Suriel ’25 came in with 147, 393, 253, 233 and 349 votes, respectively.
Several candidates, including Juan and Song, focused their platforms on accessibility and financial aid. Juan discussed providing more transparency during the billing process while Song urged Cornell to either immediately release outstanding financial aid packages or commit to a tuition freeze.
Lu and Da Silveira focused on dining issues. Da Silveira advocated for dining halls to begin serving pre-packaged meals and offer delivery services, cutting down wait times and helping to limit overcrowding during meals. Lu proposed allowing students to downgrade from the unlimited meal plan and advocated for more eateries on Central Campus to accept meal swipes.
Kim cited the difficulties of integrating into the Cornell community as a transfer student and shared her plans to make the transferring process easier by increasing the number of transfer-specific events. A major focus for both the freshman and transfer candidates was building a better sense of community on campus.
Maral Asik ’24 came in second for the transfer seat with 78 votes. In the transfer election, 162 students cast their votes out of 656 eligible — resulting in a 24.69 percent turnout rate.
Turnout is up this fall with a 29.82 percent turnout rate for the freshman election compared to the 22.74 percent in fall 2020.
Correction, Oct. 4, 2:14 p.m.: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to freshman representative candidate Pedro Da Silveira as Pedro Da Silveria.