Eight percent student turnout as newly elected officers vow to make changes
By Kani Barzani
courtesy of Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco
The results are in. AUSA Student council elections have come and gone, and the newly elected committee are eager to commence making changes.
Newly elected chair of council, Nirvan Abedi, spoke to The Gaudie, expressing his goal of increasing the efficiency of decision making in the council by cutting down to thirty members instead of ninety, as well as being more representative of students who are going through current such as the cost-of-living crisis.
Abedi commented, 'I am certainly delighted that after a hard week of campaigning, I was elected as the first ethnic minority background student to become the chair of the student council. I genuinely believe that this year is a year for reform and a year for change, so I’m very happy to be on board and to be part of the generation that is going to be making a difference within the student politics that we have in the University of Aberdeen.'
Vice-chair of council Swathi Aravind said she is committed to supporting all endeavours and her goal is make the council run as best as it can. She told The Gaudie, 'Being elected to me means seeing myself responsible for the voices of the students. Responsible to make sure they absolutely feel heard, valued, and would approach us if there’s anything that concerns them.'
She also expressed her gratitude to all who voted in her favour, commenting, ‘I [want to] also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the students who keenly voted for
myself and all the other members of the council, this shows that together we can achieve a
lot more than we can individually. If we can aspire, so can we do it.’
Others elected to posts include vice-chair sport winner Sophie Levine, vice-chair societies winner Demid Nosovitskiy, vice-chair communities winner Christina Schmid, and vice-chair environmental winner Gabriel Brame.
Abedi also went on to congratulate all the newly elected and thanked the students who voted. This election had a turnout of 8.1%, up from less than five percent turnout in the Sabbatical Officers election last March. The results provide hope that a precipitous decline in student involvement with university politics post-COVID may be in reverse.
With student enthusiasm on the rise, Abedi and the council look forward to making some genuine and favourable changes.
