ASB elections have come to a close, and results have come out for ASB officers for the 2022-2023 year.
Junior Ashley Meyer will be the ASB President, along with junior Felicia Lee as ASB Vice President. Junior Megha Madhabhushi will hold the Secretary position, and junior Vivian Trach will be the ASB Treasurer.
For the Class of 2023, current junior Ashley Hung will lead as senior president with junior Natalie Karel as senior vice president.
Current sophomores leading the Class of 2024 are Sophia Kim as junior president and Mike Song as junior vice president. Current freshmen Julian Hong and Linden Wang will lead the Class of 2025 as sophomore president and vice president, respectively.
Compared to previous years, there was a sharp decline in the number of candidates running for positions for the next school year.
Meyer said she has been through a few elections at Paly and this year was the first time she had no competitors.
“It was a much less stressful campaign week for me than for other candidates, but I still did put up some posters around campus, posted on Instagram and also reached out to a few people throughout the school,” Meyer said.
Similar to Meyer, Trach said she also had no one running against her.
“My campaigning process was pretty simple and most of my campaigning was online,” Trach said.
For campaigning, students typically plan out creative themes and mottos to use. Trach said she used a theme similar to a Spotify album cover, and used covers about money since she was running for ASB Treasurer.
Lee said when she began running, she didn’t know who she was running against.
“I thought I at least had the chance of winning as I tend to do my elections in a unique, funny and weird way,” Lee said.
Lee said her role is to help the ASB President lead ASB meetings, and lead meetings herself during the President’s absences. In addition to her duty as an ASB Vice President, Lee also has some goals of her own.
“I plan to have more school-wide events in which students can actually bond with other students, regardless of the grades they’re in,” Lee said.
Similar to Lee, Meyer said she also wants to create an inclusive community at Paly.
“Since we’re moving out of the pandemic, I think that it’s just really crucial that our community comes together and kind of works together as one to build a common goal of unity,” Meyer said.
Trach said she is facing new responsibilities as ASB Treasurer this year, such as fundraising and managing Stanford parking.
“It’s going to be a fundraiser that we have in the fall and I’m really interested to see what kind of ad news we can take with fundraising,” Trach said.
Trach said that several ASB officers thought that fundraising was oftentimes too much work and not enough return. Trach hopes to find a more efficient way to fundraise to receive higher return. Trach said another one of her goals as ASB Treasurer is to improve Valgrams.
“We had these paper forms that people would fill out, and then you would have to enter the results into a Google form that I later sorted into a giant spreadsheet,” Trach said. “Then it was just a lot of a mess because there was so much processing to do.”
