The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) released the results of the winter 2023 at-large election in an all-campus email sent by WSA Chief of Staff Hazel Allison-Way ’24 on Friday, Dec. 9, 2023, announcing the election of 11 senators. 

The group included several returning members: Molly Connolly-Ungar ’25, Tanvi Navile ’25, Ava Petillo ’25, Ben Shifrel ’25, Claire Stokes ’25, Janessa Curden ’26, and August Gardyne ’26. Saakshi Challa ’27, Noelle Crandell ’27, Saul Ferholt-Kahn ’27, and Nicolas Millan ’27 were elected as first-time senators.

Shifrel, who is a former chair of the Student Budget Committee (SBC) and will rejoin the committee this spring, described his goals for the semester. 

“[On the SBC], I worked to get increased funding for identity groups and a more clear and communicative system as a whole,” Shifrel said. “I’m excited to continue [this semester]…by allowing increased funding for identity groups and by making the process of requesting funding more simple and accessible.”

That will be a tall task for the committee, whose members have implored the Wesleyan community in recent days to vote yes on a measure to raise the Student Activity Fee from $300 to $390, which, if passed, would prevent funding for student organizations from being cut. It would account for inflation, which has increased prices by about 30% since 2015, when the fee’s current value was set. The past months have seen a growing chorus of complaints regarding the difficulty of obtaining club funding. The WSA has shifted the blame to their diminishing endowment.

“In recent years…we’ve been feeling a bit of strain to fund every club that we want to,” Judy Liu ’26, who sits on the SBC, said.

So far this academic year, the WSA has received $518,608.17 in funding requests, approving $280,551.69 for use by student organizations.

However, it’s not all an uphill battle for the WSA. Stokes, who will return to her previously held seat, described her excitement to rework the Textbook Exchange Program. The program, which began in Fall 2018, allows students to buy and sell used textbooks, easing the financial burden of textbook-heavy courses.

First-year senator Crandell detailed her ambitions to increase civic engagement on campus through the WSA’s Community Committee.

Millan, who is an international student from Hong Kong, described his aspirations for the upcoming semester. His major goals include pulling the WSA out of its budget deficit and increasing pressure on the University to accept community feedback concerning its investment decisions.

“[My goal is to] reform the all-important Committee for Investment Responsibility, which provides students and faculty with a voice in terms of important endowment investment decisions,” Millan wrote in an email to The Argus. 

Millan also described his gratitude to serve on the WSA.

“Considering the political circumstances in the region I call home, I was not able to engage in political activism,” Millan said. “It’s a privilege to make change, and I’m so excited to finally tackle important issues that I care about without any fear.”

All the new senators attended the WSA’s first meeting of the semester last Sunday, Jan. 28, where a vote to increase the Student Activity Fee overwhelmingly passed by a margin of 30–1 with four abstentions. The vote sent the issue to a referendum by the student body. 

All Wesleyan undergraduates can now vote in the referendum on WesNest; the link will close on Wednesday, Feb. 7.

Miles Pinsof-Berlowitz can be reached at mpinsofberlo@wesleyan.edu.

Correction note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the quote, “So far this academic year, the WSA has received $518,608.17 in funding requests, approving $280,551.69 for use by student organizations” to Judy Liu ’26. The article has been updated to reflect that the funding numbers were sourced from the WSA’s committee reports for the Jan. 28 General Assembly meeting.