After last month’s Student Union election, the members of the 2025-2026 Student Union Executive Board were revealed during the morning announcements. Junior Jenna Abdelhamid was elected SU President, having run for the position unopposed. The board will be made up of five seniors, five juniors, and three sophomores.
“Next year, my focus is to build a Student Union that’s not only more organized and efficient, but also more present and responsive,” Jenna said. I want students to feel like the SU is a team that’s approachable and that is truly here for the community.”
Since both the SU President and Vice President positions were unopposed in the election, Jenna said that this meant the student body was trusting her and VP Evelene Chao “to prove that trust was well-placed by showing up and delivering on what [they] promise.”
The results of the election are as follows:
Social studies teacher and COSA Jaime Baranoff said that she is looking forward to working with the SU board next year: “Every day is different, but we have a lot of great returning board members and are very hopeful that they will take the lead and share their knowledge with anyone new to the board.”
Social studies teacher and Senior advisor Blayne Gelbman, and Ms. Baranoff told The Classic that many aspects of the election and election process remained unchanged from last year. However, one change was that specific classes were selected to better fit the target audience of candidates during the SU debate. “One of the things we did this year that was better than last year was that we targeted the debates for specific classes. For the debates with the freshmen-class president, we tried to stack the auditorium with freshmen and sophomores,” said Mr. Gelbman.
According to Mr. Gelbman, the percentage of the student body that participated in the election increased from 35% to 50% this year.
Incoming SU Board members are now focusing on what they hope to accomplish in their positions next year.
2025-2026 SU Treasurer Uma Hardeo said she plans to create a more organized and timely system for fundraising requests while opening more opportunities for clubs and teams to fundraise.
Uma also said that she wanted to use her role to lower the cost of school activities and resources: “I want to work with the SU to lower the student fees for events like the junior banquet and the senior trip. I am also aware of the concerns regarding the SU card price inflation, and will do my best to lower the cost of that as well.”
Sophomore Aki Benjamin and junior Thaseena Anjum following the election, are now both acting co-Club Liaisons, while Aki will be 2025-2026 SU Club Liaison. Aki said, “[Thaseena and I] are both very new to this role, so I think it’s really helpful that there are two of us. It’s a lot of work and networking, and we are still trying to catch up with all the plans set by our predecessor.”
As for their goals for the remainder of the year, Aki and Thaseena said that they are currently in the process of running trial meetings for approved clubs, going through the club application process, in order to ensure a smooth transition into the coming school year.
Thaseena said she still hopes to stay involved in the SU even if not on the executive board. “I will still be around if anyone has any questions to ask me about how things were run during my time, and if anyone needs it, I’ll always be down to help with whatever.”
In terms of the campaign, candidates discussed how they got their message out to voters beyond in-school events.
Newly elected Freshman-Sophomore Class President Kayla Ng said that she felt people did not generally know about her campaign, but producing content for Instagram Reels helped bridge this gap.
“I mainly promoted my campaign through reels centered on my plans,” she said. “I also created a music video where I changed the lyrics to be about my campaign.”
Similarly, Freshman-Sophomore co-president Siddhini Singh said that she focused on “using popular trends” in her reels, noting how she “timed [her] posts and made sure they would be consistent and be able to [reach] the most amount of people.”
