On March 31, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) announced the unofficial results of the 2025–2026 student elections, with the GradForward slate winning all of the executive positions. The election results are pending approval at the UTGSU’s April 28 Board of Directors meeting.

1,300 voted out of 20,517 eligible voters, with a voter turnout of 6.3 per cent  — a slight decrease from last year’s 7.6 per cent voter turnout. 

Election Results

Candidates from the GradForward slate ran the executive elections unopposed,  except for the vice president (VP) graduate life position. 

Students re-elected Amir Moghadam as the UTGSU’s president with 1,042 votes. Sixty-seven voters voted against, and 191 abstained.

Nicholas Silver was elected VP academics with 1,010 votes; Seema Allahdini was elected VP external with 995 votes; Farshad Murtada was re-elected VP finance with 1,018 votes; and Dominic Shillingford was elected VP internal with 1,004 votes. 

GradForward candidate Eliz Shimshek was elected VP graduate life with 622 votes, while independent candidate Fateme Eskandary received 386.

Board of Directors 

Every year, the graduate student body elects five directors to represent each division of students. Division One serves students in the humanities, Division Two for social sciences, Division Three for physical sciences, and Division Four for life sciences. 

UTM and UTSC graduate students also each have their own UTGSU director.

This election season, no candidates ran for Division One director positions. The UTGSU announced that applications for interim positions would likely open in the summer.

Five candidates — Hiba Akbar, Alireza Nouri, Willis Opondo, Hai Tran, and Elaine Yu — ran for the five available Division Two director positions. According to the UTGSU, Opondo and Yu were not listed on the ballot originally, but these administrative errors were resolved on the first day of voting, March 25, and did not impact the election result. 

In an email to The Varsity, Chief Returning Officer Fatima Formuli wrote that after Opondo and Yu raised these concerns, UTGSU began discussions with Simply Voting to add their names to the election rather than restart the election as a whole. 

“Given that these were uncontested positions and that it was in day one of voting,” Formuli wrote, “it was determined that adding them to the ballot would be the better solution than having students recast ballots.” 

According to Formuli, Yu was added to the ballot on the afternoon of March 25 and Opondo by 9:15 a.m. on March 26. 

Six candidates ran for the five available director positions each in Divisions Three and Four. Friedemann Krannich, Shana Alexander, Amir Mohammed Zadeh, Sina Ahmadi Malayeri, and Alden Sova received the most votes as directors in Division Three. Shiyuan Bian, Hani Choksi, Iris Li, Shmily Lin, and Lella Erceg received the most votes as directors in Division Four. 

UTM’s Jasnoor Sandhu and UTSC’s Valentyna Kundas won their uncontested director elections.