On the evening of March 7, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) posted on its website the unofficial results of this year’s SCSU general elections. Members of the slate RISE UTSC won all of the executive positions for the 2025–2026 academic year. The winning slate ran against INSPIRE UTSC, led by current SCSU President Hunain Sindhu.

The union must ratify the results at its March board of directors (BOD) meeting before they become official. 

Election results

Students elected the SCSU’s current Vice-President (VP) Equity Lalise Shifara  as president. Shifara won with nearly 49 per cent of the votes, beating out Sindhu by about five per cent. There were 114 spoiled ballots for the presidential election, with a total of 683 spoiled ballots between the six executive positions.

 

Voters elected Maya Khan as the SCSU’s next VP Academics and University Affairs, defeating Heba Reeyaz by around 15 per cent. Fawzia Elhag was elected VP External, beating out Ayesha Ashraf by two per cent. Christine Villa was elected VP Equity over Renate Mathu by 12 per cent. Emeka Okolo was chosen for VP Campus Life over Rafay Malik by four per cent. Finally, Athisayaa Prabagar was elected VP Operations, winning Sait Simsek by four per cent.

Overall, approximately 1563 students cast their ballots in the election, amounting to approximately 10.7 per cent of the 2023-2024 UTSC student population. This is a two per cent decrease from last year’s SCSU election turnout.

26 students ran for the 19 available BOD positions. For the nine contested BOD positions, voters elected five directors from INSPIRE UTSC: Alina Khan, Ousman Jikineh, Samuella Ojo, Tinu Boboe, and Aasthaa Sawarkar. Voters also elected four directors from RISE UTSC: Faiza Rutba, Ilyana Jiwa, Lucan Ching, and Heidi McArdle. Every candidate who was elected was part of either the INSPIRE or RISE slates. Only three students ran outside of a slate.

Maimuna Akhter of INSPIRE UTSC and Arjun Singh Yanglem, Elodie Fouejieu, Anisa Persaud, Alexandros Grekos, Natasha Osal, Ethan Gibson, and Mohammed Tajudeen Onigbanjo of RISE UTSC were elected to the BOD by acclamation, meaning that they automatically got the positions because they ran unopposed for their respective positions.  

No candidate ran for director of anthropology and the newly created Indigenous director position. Both seats will be pushed to the 2025 fall by-elections. 

Poster promises and paper cuts 

During the campaign period, students took to the UTSC subreddit to post complaints about the number of campaign posters on campus and how students have rearranged them. All posters have now been removed from the campus in accordance with the SCSU’s Elections Procedure Code that mandates posters to be removed 72 hours after the voting period ends. 

At the SCSU candidates’ debate on March 3, the topic of postering came up and both slates promised to recycle their posters through a UTSC Print Hub initiative where one-sided paper is used to make notebooks.

However, following the debate, Dembe Rostova, a second-year UTSC student studying psychology, wrote in an email to The Varsity that the candidates’ promises to recycle the posters weren’t accurate. 

“The UTSC Print Hub cannot repurpose glossy posters into notebooks, as glossy paper is not writable,” wrote Rostova. “This raises questions about the validity of RISE UTSC’s claim that they collaborated with the Print Hub for this initiative.” 

“I strongly believe that the students have been misled and continue to be misinformed, which is impacting the election results in their favour,” he wrote. 

After the SCSU debate, Shifara stated in an interview with The Varsity that their slate only put up half of the number of posters allowed during the campaign period after hearing criticisms from the student body. 

“Because we read the student feedback on Reddit, we understand. As we said, we’re here to listen to students,” Shifara said post-debate. 

However, Rostova became aware through a friend who works at the SCSU that RISE UTSC printed the maximum number of posters allowed — which is 100 per executive and 50 per board director — but chose not to put them up. 

“This inconsistency raises concerns about transparency and the accuracy of statements made by [Shifara],” wrote Rostova. 

In an email to The Varsity, Shifara wrote that the Print Hub confirmed that they could not accept RISE UTSC’s campaign posters due to the paper being glossy. 

Shifara also wrote that “[Rostova’s] claim is correct” and they were incorrectly told by the SCSU’s Chief Returning Officer during the All Candidates meeting that they could only have 50 posters per executive candidate and 25 per board of director candidate. They later realized they could print more after reading the SCSU’s Elections Procedure Code. 

“The reason we ultimately decided against putting these posters up was because we understood that the students were upset with the posters being all around campus, and that there was a lot of online discourse surrounding the posters,” wrote Shifara. “Ignoring the students’ concerns and upsetting them more was not something that RISE wanted to participate in, so we did not poster the remaining.”

Shifara added that their team plans to donate all the posters they printed back to the company that printed them “to be shredded and used as paper shred for their other products.”

In an email to The Varsity, Sindhu wrote that INSPIRE UTSC “promised our students through our Instagram that we would inquire with Print Hub about the possibility of repurposing the posters or ensuring they are properly recycled at a paper recycling facility.” 

“We visited the Print Hub the day after the debate, and they informed us that since all the election posters were printed with a glossy stock finish, they could not be repurposed into notebooks,” wrote Sindhu. “Unfortunately, for this reason, we are unable to donate our posters to Print Hub.”

Sindu added that the Print Hub recommended printing on regular paper next year and plans to make an amendment to the SCSU’s Election Procedure Code to make regular paper a requirement for all posters to be repurposed following this year. Currently, the code does not stipulate the type of paper election posters should be made of. 

“We have also been exploring local paper recycling facilities to ensure they are properly recycled rather than simply being processed through the campus recycling facilities,” he wrote.

The UTSC Print Hub did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment in time for publication.