Student government can be an exciting way for students to practice civic engagement and to develop political skills. On Sept. 17, the Student Union sent out an email revealing the winners of their Fall 2024 elections. Hercules Zhang ’28 and Shelby Terry ’28 were elected as Multicultural Senators. Harrison Madnick ’25 was elected as a Class of 2025 Senator. Himanshu Sahore ’28, Monica Lopez Hernandez ’28 and Sarah Hasan Jafary ’28 were elected as Class of 2028 senators and Shyann Rampaul ’28 was elected as the Myra Kraft Achievers Program Senator. 

One might expect the politically active students of Brandeis University to leap at the chance to vote in Student Union elections. However, interest in student government elections is waning. According to their email, 53% of first years voted, in sharp contrast to 20% of sophomores, 15% of juniors, and 12% of seniors. Those elected in their respective contest were not elected by a large portion of the undergraduate student body. According to Student Union election data, only 456 students from across all four grades participated in this semester’s election. At the heart of these statistics is one key question: what is the root cause behind the dwindling interest in Student Union elections at Brandeis University?

Starry-eyed first-years arrive on campus ready to seize every opportunity and to change the world one vote at a time. As these students grow older, they start to lose faith as they see the infeasibility of the reforms of which they dreamed. Newly elected Class of 2028 Senator, Jafary, remarked in a Sept.18 virtual interview that “this desire to change and reform wanes with time as students grow accustomed — or, dare I say, apathetic — to their working conditions. They situate themselves comfortably within the existing context because their efforts at reform may not have proven fruitful, or perhaps they made no effort at all.”  

Burnout could be the second leading factor contributing toward the waning lack of interest in voting in student elections as students grow closer to graduation. In an in-person Sept. 20 interview, Student Union President Rani Balakrishna ’25 suggested that “the upperclassmen not contributing; maybe it’s burnout.” She further remarked that “I think the problem lies within busyness. I remember as a freshman I was keeping an eye on my email constantly, and as people get older at Brandeis, that could drop off. People just get tired of, like, you know, seeing all these emails.” Brandeis students get a ton of emails every day. They grow tired of reading boring emails, and they stop checking them at all. Balakrishna attributes this lack of engagement to a lack of awareness and an overwhelming sense of burnout. It is also important to note that during the Fall 2024 Myra Kraft Achievers Program vote, an issue with the voting software was unveiled that only allowed first years to vote. As the issue was overlooked during previous election cycles, it is currently unknown how much it has affected student voter participation statistics. 

From a student’s perspective, the lack of communication and transparency between the Student Union and the rest of the student body may be the underlying factor of voter apathy. During a Sept. 21 interview conducted over the phone, Brooke Bass ’25 confided that “no matter who gets elected, I haven’t noticed much of a difference. I always research all of the candidates and vote, but often they run unopposed anyway. Last year’s Student Union was picked by only 6% of the student body.”  She further commented that “at the end of the day, when most of [the candidates] are running unopposed and so few students are even involved, I think it’s laughable to claim they represent our student body. They represent under 10% of it, and of those people, we may have voted differently if we’d had more than one option.” This sentiment that the Student Union is not representative of, or responsive to, the needs of the student body has led many students to feel that there is no point to voting, since nothing will change anyway. 

Meanwhile, Balakrishna expressed that when the Student Union attempted to hold office hours last year “one person came the entire year. So it’s frustrating when we try to make ourselves so available, and then people complain that we’re not hearing them, but we don’t know what people are thinking if they don’t come to us.” She described a plethora of projects that the Student Union is working on behind the scenes, such as getting the Hoot Market to supply multicultural hair products and planning various events that the rest of the student body likely does not realize are going on. There appears to be a continuous cycle of students losing faith in the efficacy of the Student Union, and therefore erasing their own voices, before they can be ignored by those who are supposed to represent them. A cycle of miscommunication is thus perpetuated. 

Bass further remarked that “I think just generally more interaction with the student body... [The Student Union] could be doing plenty of things behind the scenes, but if we don’t know what they’re doing, then, to us, they’re doing nothing. It would help with the disconnect between the Student Union and the student body if they updated us on what they were doing in an accessible and public format… I’m not saying their job is easy, because I’m sure they’re doing plenty of things that we can’t see, but if they don’t make them visible then we won’t see them. And if the students can’t see the effect the Student Union has on campus, why would they feel motivated to vote or run for positions?” For Bass, stronger communication may contribute towards an increase in voter turnout. Balakrishna remarked that this growing disinterest in voting “could be detrimental, I think, to everyone’s student experience… electing people that don’t actually represent them.” It seems that promoting open dialogue between the Student Union and the rest of the student body may contribute towards the resolution of this demographic trend.