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Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Tuesday, March 1 when the winning candidates were announced. It was updated on Wednesday, March 2 to include an interview with president-elect Hannah Woodworth.
After a dramatic election cycle, USG announced the preliminary results for the election of officials for the 2022-2023 school year Tuesday night at the USG Senate meeting. Hannah Woodworth and Nivea Krishnan secured the presidential office, while Rachel Lee and Collin Colson as well as Kyle Valdes and Safal Mengi, both write-in candidate teams, were defeated.
After Weston Belle-Geddes and Erica Wang withdrew from the race, only Woodworth and Krishnan remained on the USG presidential ballot. In the two weeks leading up to the election, the Lee and Colson and Valdes and Mengi teams joined the candidates as write-ins and shook the election with their campaign platforms.
Out of 21,000 undergraduate students at USC, a total of 4,451 undergraduate students voted in the USG election. Woodworth and Krishnan’s campaign gained 2,453 votes, or about 55% of the total votes. Total voter turnout of eligible voters was about 21%.
The Lee and Colson campaign received a total of 823 votes and the Valdes and Mengi campaign followed with 473 votes. 702 students abstained from voting for or writing in any presidential candidates.
Woodworth and Krishnan’s platform focused on expanding the area of the USC Lyft Ride Program, creating a stricter standard for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), improving upon the Office of Student Accessibility Services (OSAS) based on student feedback and more. They also promised to better connect USG with the students they represent. One way they plan on achieving this is by setting up a table on Trousdale Parkway weekly and engaging with students.
“Right now, there is a lack of information that our student government is offering students about our resources, why we’re here and the purpose of our organization,” Woodworth said, “and we need to be doing more to be forward facing, student facing so that they see us out and about on campus.”
Woodworth said she hopes to create an environment so students know who their elected officials are and how to approach them with concerns.
The first thing Woodworth plans to do is create a system of student petition recognition that will require administration to act on them to “validate student organizing efforts and to make sure we are really promoting real change on this campus.”
The Senate election, less tumultuous than the presidential election, also concluded with the results revealed shortly before the presidential results. The 2022-2023 elected senate members of USG are as follows, with the first name garnering the most votes and descending after:
Devin Ayala, Navya Singh, Michelle Lu, Yoav Gillath, Divya Jakatdar, Maria Barun, Aidan Feighery, Sanjana Sambhwani, Jessica Gonzalez, Alvaro Flores, Sam Habibi and Victor Ye.
Official results will be released and certified by Campus Activities staff by March 8. Elected candidates will take their oath of office on Inauguration Day, April 5.
Grace ONeill contributed to this report.