The International Student Union elected three new executives on Monday – all of whom were women.
The positions, which will go into effect next year, are president, vice president and treasurer.
Carla Triana was elected president, Jenna Grams was elected vice president and Yuxuan Huo was elected treasurer. The elections for the positions of director of public relations, programing directors, chief of staff and webmaster will be held in two weeks.
A ballot for director of communications was held but the candidate did not come to the meeting that day because of a lack of communication. Because of this, elections will be held for that position in two weeks, and the position remains open.
ISU held their meeting at 6 p.m. in Ellis Hall where members discussed budgets for upcoming events and any announcements that had to be made.
Halfway through the meeting, Hashim Pashtun, ISU’s current president, announced that the new elections were going to be held. Each organization present at the meeting got four separate ballots, one for each position. There were 17 organizations present, and each candidate had to receive 10 votes to win.
Each candidate had three minutes to give his or her presentation and after that the floor would be open for questions from the body.
The first candidate to present was Ali Khaledi Nasab, a graduate student studying physics, running for president.
Khaledi felt that the biggest problem within the ISU was communication. He stated that in one of the courses he teaches, about 90 percent of the students say they had never met an international student before him.
“We need to communicate more with domestic people,” Khaledi said, referring to the state of the university.
During his argument, he stated that Muslims were the “least favorite” now, to which an audience member got angry. The audience member, who stated that he was a Muslim, said that he was being treated very well, and it was not fair to say that Muslims are not favored.
Khaledi fought back repeating his point that he wanted to reach more domestic people to show that “we are all equal.”
The next candidate to present was Triana, a senior studying business, running for president. She has been involved with the ISU since her freshman year and has also been the president of the Latino Student Union.
She stated that she had already had a meeting with the new interim president, David Descutner, about how international students can feel safer on OU’s campus.
“I am willing to step out of my comfort zone to help the people who don’t have a voice,” Triana said.
After the vote, Triana was elected the new president of ISU.
Triana emphasized how passionate she is about the work that the ISU does. She considers the organization her “home away from home.”
What Triana wants most to do is to work will smaller international organizations. She said that if the smaller organizations do well, then ISU does well.
“You need to have a strong foundation to support the bigger organization,” Triana said.
The election for vice president included only one name on the ballot: Grams, a sophomore studying music production.
Grams family came from Hungary and talked about how welcomed her family felt, but “times are changing.”
Grams was also running for treasurer and director of communications, but due to the fact that she won the election for vice president, her name was taken off the ballot for both.
The candidate left for treasurer was Huo, a senior studying accounting who won the position.
After the meeting was over, Pashtun, a graduate student studying electrical engineering, explained how happy he was with the way the election turned out and that every new person elected tonight is a woman. He said that he has a lot of trust in Triana, and he is proud to see everyone coming together.
“You can really see the diversity here,” Pashtun said, “and I will always be on the sidelines to help.”
