The results are in. But in its wake are voter apathy, a letter of apology, heated online discussion, so many posters … and even more head scratches. 

The official 2026-27 USSU executive team is as follows: 

President: Abtin Safaeian

Vice-President Academic Affairs: Ashley Mendez Rosales

Vice-President Operations & Finance: Elmer Vincent

Vice-President Student Affairs: Azul Gonzalez Avila

Each academic year, USask’s student body has a chance to govern its own affairs and vote on who makes up the USSU. The USSU is an executive body made up of students independent from the university, and executives are paid to represent fellow students at USask. 

Low Voter Turnout

Just a few clicks away, voting is accessible to all students on PAWS. In this year’s election cycle, 10.59 per cent of students voted in the USSU election, which is 2,036 students out of 19,234 eligible voters. 

This low voter turnout calls into question who the USSU executives are representing, and makes one wonder why student engagement is so low. However, this year’s low turnout is one statistic in a larger downward trend. Last year’s election saw a similar turnout, with only 10.4 per cent of students voting and a few candidates running uncontested. 10 years ago, in 2016, voter turnout was only 23.9 per cent. 

The USSU has made efforts to rectify the low student engagement with the role of an Elections Coordinator, a role fulfilled by a student as a non-partisan third party. 

Still, many students felt out of the loop of the campaigning process as a whole. For third-year engineering student Ashley Chovan, the election failed to catch her attention at all. “It’s just not something that’s in the center of my world at that time. I don’t know who these people are.” 

Chovan mentions how little the posters in the Arts Tunnel do to inform her of the election or each candidate. “That’s the only bit of promotional stuff that I guess I saw was the posters. I don’t know if they [have a] table in the Arts Tunnel where they’re talking about their stuff … but even if they were, I have one class over there … so I don’t even walk through the Arts Tunnel to get to it.” 

The campaigning doesn’t seem to be reaching students at the PAC building either. For third-year kinesiology student Lila Wobeser, the attention the posters garner is not necessarily productive. “I don’t think they do much campaigning in [the PAC] or anything like that, or in the PAC. I don’t really pay a lot of attention, other than it seems like there’s a week where five million posters go up, and I always get a million followers from everyone running. It kind of just feels like it’s a popularity contest, or whoever has the most money for posters.” 

Mustafa Al-Salihi, a second-year biomedical sciences student, made his thoughts clear to candidates during campaigning. “So I was like, ‘I’m gonna be honest with you guys, [the] majority of people have no idea what it is that any of you do. We don’t know what exactly your reach is. We don’t know what you’re responsible for. We don’t know how much actual impact you guys have.’” He continues, “The campaigns seem very vague. Nobody knows.”

Online Discourse 

Students have not been shy to state their opinions in online forums like the University of Saskatchewan’s unofficial Reddit page: 

“None of the candidates really impressed me, they really struggled to answer questions and not a lot of depth to their campaigns.”

“Seemed like every single presidential candidate struggled to answer real questions being answered by students. Not feeling any of them tbh.”

“I haven’t seen a single candidate that made me believe they aren’t just doing this to pad out their resume, shameful line-up this year.”

“I voted to abstain for all the President positions because they are all brutal.”

“I’ve been super disappointed in the candidates this year. Half of them are completely shameless in their tactics. And no, following my private Instagram account with no posts and next to zero people from Usask will not make me vote for you.”

Vague Candidate Platforms 

Of the five presidential candidates, “Abstain” was the third-most popular choice with 298 votes.  

Students noted ambiguity and a lack of outreach during campaigning that left little confidence in their candidates. Students voiced frustration about many aspects of the platforms themselves. 

Each year, candidates have the opportunity to attend both an in-person and an online forum to outline their platform and engage with student questions and concerns. Hosted this year at Louis’ pub, students seemed to leave with less certainty than when they first walked in.

Neither the in-person Louis’ forum nor the online forum saw full candidate attendance. Though some candidates ran unopposed, students like Hayley Allen said she felt let down by the lack of effort. As an English student and incoming President of the Arts and Science Student Union, she walked away disappointed by the platforms of this year’s candidates. 

“It’s just disappointing going there as a student who actually really cares about student groups, and isn’t doing it at all for the resume, and does it because I enjoy it. It’s disappointing seeing so many people not have a plan and not show that they’re actually there to support students.” 

Students posed a wide range of hard-hitting questions to candidates at the forum — from inquiring about candidates’ understanding of the Indigenous Truth Policy deybwewin | taapwaywin | tapwewin, to how they would advocate for marginalized students, and even whether candidates might challenge university administration when necessary in representing students. 

Allen recounts the crowd’s frustration at the forum. “Every single candidate, I can say confidently, couldn’t tell any of the people at the forum a thought-out … mechanized plan of their points. Every single person, pretty much said, ‘Oh, well, I’m not the president,’ or ‘I’m not the finance person, so when I get there, I’ll get to it.’” 

Student criticisms of the forum included frustrations that the word “advocacy” was frequently used in answers of candidates’ answers. Students who were at the forum mentioned that they felt candidates’ answers were not fleshed out and lacked specific actions to carry out said “advocacy,” and for whom they would be advocating for. 

First-year political studies student Mika Soroño recounts the in-person forum. “Every time they said advocacy, we just laughed. It felt like they just learned what that word meant that day and just kept saying it.”

She recognizes the power USSU executives hold, and believes they should mechanize their platform promises. “It’s one thing to advocate for those people, but your job is literally to do things for the student body and to make their lives a lot easier…I think that these people have the power because they’re the ones shaking hands with really important people, right? They represent all, however many USask students there are.”

Allen states candidly, “Honestly, the forum … was more of a comedy show than it was an educational thing. It was honestly ridiculous.” The forum saw an engaged crowd, with attendees cheering and booing throughout. 

Puffery

Out of the view of the student population, one candidate took his outreach a more daring route. According to the March 26 meeting minutes of the University Student Council, VP of Operations and Finance candidate Elmer Vincent was penalized for a comment he made during his campaigning period. The statement alluded to a potential reward in exchange for support and votes. It was ultimately dismissed by the elections committee as “puffery” and deemed a joke.

Sorono sat on the Elections Committee as a Student at Large. She believes the incident should have been taken more seriously, whether or not Vincent’s statement was a joke. 

“I advocated and said candidly that this is something that’s really concerning, because even if he is joking, even if he is just saying it as a passing thing, it still shows his lack of regard for the student body and lack of respect for the Union itself..I didn’t deem it as puffery.”

Vincent was asked to write a letter of apology to the Elections Committee, and $200 of his $600 USSU reimbursements for campaign material were withheld. Vincent was not disqualified from running as Vice President of Operations and Finance, and has since won the position with 1,013 votes. 

Election Bylaw Violations

During the election campaign, student concerns about campaign violations were also brought into the conversation. Concerns of slating, where candidates run together to promote a campaign, were raised. Other anomalies, like handing out flyers during the voting period, as well as having unverified candidate representatives, had students raising concerns about the rigour of this year’s elections committee. 

Mia Szabo is a second-year psychology and political studies major who sat on the Governance Committee that updated the constitution outlining each USSU executive position. Her concern is with small, yet consistent policy violations by the candidates. “It’s literally a job. It’s not just some student group situation … it’s not the same as running for a club position or anything, right? This is a fully paid position. So I think that candidates were really lacking in that sense, and also just [an] understanding [of] the basic bylaws and election protocols was honestly not there.”

According to Szabo, policy violations included groups of students who were asked by candidates to promote their campaign. Under USSU election bylaws, anyone campaigning for a candidate must be registered as part of their official Campaign Committee. Students recall being stopped in Place Riel and the hallways, or being interrupted in the Murray library by students unofficially campaigning and promoting candidate platforms. 

Allen recalls, “People like candidates’ friends [were] pretty much swarming in little groups in the tunnels and just stopping people … I voiced [to] multiple of the candidates’ friends that I have voted already and that I didn’t want any of their garbage.” Szabo notes, “There was one time where I got stopped in the hallway, and I said, ‘Oh, are you part of their registered Campaign Committee?’ And they were like, ‘No, what’s that?’”

Szabo is disappointed that these violations went unaddressed. “It’s just that kind of stuff that it’s like the integrity of this entire election is now compromised because there was no actual enforcement of these literal bylaws.” 

Basic bylaws like poster placement and campaign materials were not enforced by the election committee, students point out. Section 2, titled “Campaign Material”, of the elections policy states the following:

“All campaign materials must be approved and/or stamped by either the Assistant Chief Returning Officer (ACRO) or the General Manager’s Designate (GMD) prior to posting. Campaigning and campaign material will not take place or be distributed in University Libraries.” 

Szabo points out this line in the Election bylaws, continuing: “it must be approved by these positions, and it’s so evident that half of it wasn’t.” Allen noticed this trend as well. “Multiple candidates were handing out flyers, and business cards, and pamphlets and stuff that weren’t approved by the USSU.”

Section 2.1 states strict rules limiting the number of posters permitted per building, as well as permitted areas to place them. The section states, “No posters of any kind in the Agriculture/Geology Atriums, the Arts Ramp, University Washrooms, or University Libraries.” 

Stacy Kim, a student in biomedical sciences, echoes a common sentiment of frustration about the lack of clarity surrounding election campaigning.“That’s never been how a USSU election works. There are posters in areas where there aren’t supposed to be posters. And the thing is, the poster and guidelines exist for a reason. The reason you can’t have them halfway up the ramp is because that’s partially an accessibility issue. It feels like everyone came out of nowhere, and no one followed the rules.”

Szabo believes it’s a case of death by a thousand cuts. “All these things may seem little in the grand scheme of it, but it just undermines the democracy of the USSU. So it just got really problematic towards the end.”

Kim expresses a concern regarding the incoming executive team. “I think … if we have a student government that hasn’t been willing to connect with their community and isn’t willing to follow the rules, that bodes very, very badly for the future of the USSU this upcoming year.”

Allen believes that despite the lack of confidence and student engagement, there is merit to the USSU and more that can be done on the part of the executive team. “When it comes down to it, the USSU does do quite a bit … I think if they were a bit more transparent, and being like, ‘Yeah, the administration blocks a bunch of shit’ … if they were just more realistic on the stuff they can and can’t do, and making that their presence a bit more open to the other colleges, I think it would be better.”