The candidates for this year’s Governing Council elections were released on January 17, with a total of 47 candidates running for the eight positions the council reserves for students.
Governing Council is U of T’s highest governing body in charge of managing the university, including its properties and assets. Its powers include setting tuition fees and deciding on policies like the mandatory mental health leave.
There are 28 students running for the two Constituency I positions, which represent full-time students in the Faculty of Arts & Science, UTSC, and UTM.
The two seats for part-time undergraduate students were claimed by Susan Froom and Mala Kashyap. Froom is the current Vice-President Internal at Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students (APUS), and has been a member of Governing Council since 2014; Kashyap is the President of the APUS and currently serves on Governing Council’s Academic Board.
The students running for Constituency I undergraduate seats are: Hussain Ali, Tejbeer Bhullar, Tyler Biswurm, Julia DaSilva, Academic Board member Arina Dmitrenko, Georgia Dryden, Elizabeth Frangos, Serena J. Gu, Edie (Yi Yi) Guo, Nicholas Heinrich, UTSU Vice-President University Affairs Adrian Huntelar, Carl Kersey, Mascha Kopytina, Audrey Lee, Jingjing Liu, Blair P. Madeley, Price Amobi Maka, former St. Michael’s College Director Georgina Merhom, Aidan Mohammad, Maha Rahman, James Rasalingam, Sukarmina Singh Shankar, Tasnia Syeda, Yousra Tarrabou, Tiger Wu, Leon Zeliang Zhang, Yufei Zhang, and Alan Zheng.
The students running for the two Constituency II undergraduate seats for students in professional faculties are Ramz Aziz, Chetanya Choudhary, Joshua Humphrey, Litos Li, Zhenglin Liu, Hanna Singer, Tom Sutherland, Twesh Upadhyaya, and Hanya Waleed Abdelgabbar Wahdan.
Liu currently serves on Governing Council’s University Affairs Board. Upadhyaya is currently a member of Governing Council as well as a member of the Academic Board.
There are five candidates for the single graduate student Constituency I seat, representing those studying humanities and social sciences: Emily Clare, Harry Orbach-Miller, Igor Samardzic, Yasseen Tasabehji, and Wales Wong.
There are three students running for the graduate student Constituency II seat, representing physical and life sciences: UTSU Associate President Nathan Chan, Sandhya Mylabathula, and Sabrina Sen.
The campaign period is January 22 to February 16. The elections are set to run from February 5–16. The students elected will serve year-long terms.
Disclosure: Nathan Chan served as the Photo Editor at The Varsity from May 2016 to April 2017.
