Mike Slass elected Class of 2025 president

A total of 376 students cast votes in Wednesday's Freshman election. It marked the first in-person election Rensselaer student government has held since the Fall of 2019. In the presidential race, Mike Slass won with 35.82% of the total vote, beating out Finn Welch by seven votes.

Faren Thompson, who was the only vice presidential candidate listed on the ballot, defeated write-in candidate Alanna Darin, who received two votes.

Thompson also led the field in the balloting for Senators, but will turn down the position to instead serve as Vice President. The next four candidates receiving the most votes were Nic Fostini, Jacob Lorelli, Ben Hadad, and Michael Papadopoulos.

Ten candidates received votes for the eight open representative positions. Jayden Smith, Aditya Goyal, Esha Gupta, and Aaryan Bhatt, as well as write-in candidates Ferran Diaz and Cameron Heuer secured representative positions. Papadopoulos turned down the positions and will instead accept the position of Senator. There was a three-way tie for the last two seats with Ibrahim Ali, Ryan Hickey, and Katherine Barney all receiving six write-in votes.

Elections Commission Chairman Nick Longchamp '24 gave the following statement to The Polytechnic on how the tie will be broken:

"The Elections Commission gets in contact with the class of 2025 council telling them there are two open [representative] spots and there was a three-way tie for those two spots. From there, the council will discuss how to fill the positions. They can choose to open those two spots to just those three people who tied, or they can choose to open the spots to anyone in the freshman cohort. No matter which option they choose, the positions will be filled by the council. They will hold interviews with interested parties and then take a vote on the council and decide who to appoint."

Editor's Note: The spelling of Michael Papadopoulos has been corrected.