Chitra Parikh ’21 elected USG president, both proposed referenda pass

Chitra Parikh ’21 was elected to be the next Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president with 74 percent of the student body vote, according to an email announcement by USG sent on Friday morning. Both of the proposed referenda on the ballot passed with overwhelming percentage of the votes.

“I’m so honored and grateful to serve as USG President this upcoming year,” Parikh wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “I’m looking forward to working with an incredible team, and I can’t wait to get started!”

After serving as USG vice president this past year, Parikh ran on a platform based on reform to mental health, Title IX, sustainability, accessibility, and living conditions. During the campaigning cycle, Parikh participated in a presidential forum with fellow candidate David Esterlit ’21 and sat down with the ‘Prince’ for a Q&A session.

“I'd like to congratulate Chitra on her win, and wish her the best of luck and success going forward,” Esterlit wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “I do hope that Chitra and USG will pay some attention in the future to students' economic concerns. USG is only as powerless as it allows itself to be.”

Esterlit added that the process of campaigning itself was very meaningful to him.

"I knew no one on campus before I started this campaign, so going from zero name-recognition to 600 votes is extremely gratifying,“ Esterlit wrote. “Every single one of these votes was turned out through our grassroots efforts and door to door campaigning. I would like to thank each and every one of these voters for believing in our mission.”

Andres Larrieu ’22 will be vice president after serving as a class senator this year.

The first referendum, which calls for students to be able to remove their PDF until the end of the term, passed overwhelmingly with 80 percent of votes and the second referendum calling for a sustainability chair passed with 83 percent of votes.

Rachel Hazan ’21 will serve as Treasurer and Sophie Torres ’21 will be Social Chair. Christal Angel Ng ’22 will be chair of the Campus and Community Affairs Committee.

Christian Potter ’22 scored a victory as Academics Chair after Shaffin Siddiqui ’22 was disqualified for campaign violations. By a slight majority of 52 percent, Aaron Leung ’23 is now Undergraduate Life Chair.

About 43 percent of undergraduate students voted in the executive committee and referendum election, indicating a five percent increase from last year’s USG winter election.

The 2023 USG class senator elections were the most contested, seeing narrow victories. Julio Cezar ’23 was elected with 23 percent of votes and Ryan Cho ’23 was elected with 17 percent of votes, just one percent more than the following opponent. The 2023 class senator election received a total of 1,146 votes.