Thursday, Sept. 25, the College of William and Mary Student Assembly’s Independent Elections Commission announced that Daria Lesmerises ’29 won the class of 2029 presidential election. Riya Budhrani ’29, Rhys Runnels ’29, Neha Baskar ’29 and Jenny Wang ’29 won the four class of 2029 senator spots, and all three class of 2026 senator candidates who ran received a spot: Nick DeSante ’26, Isha Alaina Tubera ’26 and Elie Bide ’26.
The IEC, which oversees SA’s election process, stated that 645 class of 2029 students voted in the election. This accounts for approximately one-third of the nearly 1,900 students in the student body. The IEC certified that Budhrani received 305 votes, Runnels received 272 votes, Baskar received 235 votes and Wang received 231 votes. A much smaller proportion of 206 class of 2026 students voted to fill their vacant senator spots.
Thursday night, SA hosted an election celebration party in Tidewater B of the Sadler Center. Immediately after the results came out, Lesmerises shared her reactions to winning the presidential election.
“It doesn’t feel real,” she said. “It was kind of a silly race I feel like, but I’m actually just so excited. I was getting so nervous, and I didn’t realize how nervous I would be. I just really care about this a lot, so I’m super excited.”
She also expressed interest in enacting the ideas she ran her campaign.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all I can do,” she said. “I just want to see what’s possible because when running, you don’t get the exact parameters of what you actually can do within being president. So I’m really excited to see what I can actually do.”
A large part of Lesmerises’ campaign was feasibility as she wanted her platform’s ideas to be realistically accomplishable during her term.
“I want my ideas to be done in a year,” Lesmerises said ahead of the election. “They’re all pretty attainable. Because I was class president in high school, I know what works and what doesn’t.”
Lesmerises shared her excitement about her idea to film dorm tour videos for all of the first-year residence halls. She remembered being confused as an incoming student about what the dorms would look like due to the lack of visual representation online, prompting her to consider a future collaboration with Residence Life.
“No one knows what the dorms look like, especially the new ones,” she said. “I think it’s so important that the freshmen have an idea when they’re choosing where they will live for an entire year.”
Like Lesmerises, DeSante also felt passionately about his class of 2026 senator platform. Specifically, DeSante focused his campaign on sustainability as he formerly served as an undersecretary in the sustainability department of SA’s executive branch.
“Being in the executive cabinet, I’ve always had in mind other ways to implement my ideas of how sustainability can improve students’ quality of life here,” DeSante said. “Some of the policies I’ve been thinking about is expanding water bottle filling stations across campus where they have been lacking.”
DeSante also explained his idea to expand bike pump stations.
“A lot of my campaign also has to do with giving people or places access to resources they have been missing,” DeSante said. “So, for example, there’s pump stations we have for bikes, but not many students know about them, and bikes are a great sustainable way to travel on campus. I want to make sure people have access wherever they are for fixing.”
After winning the election, DeSante shared a statement with the Flat Hat regarding his enthusiasm to start putting his ideas into practice.
“I’m glad to have the opportunity to serve as a class of ’26 senator for our final year, and I’m excited to start working for the students,” DeSante wrote. “I’m ready to get to work on initiatives that will improve students’ quality of life and amplify their voices.”
Newly elected freshmen senators Runnels and Baskar expressed their gratitude to their voters. The two ran a joint campaign for senator spots.
“I’m feeling really good because this is something we did together,” Baskar said. “We ran our whole campaign together, and talked to each other about the whole process. It’s really great that we were both elected to this together.”
Runnels and Baskar met at Day for Admitted Students in March 2025. They connected over shared interests, and this fall, decided to run together despite hearing that joint campaign strategies often do not pan out.
“Someone warned us that joint campaigns don’t always work out,” Runnels said. “In our case, I think we’re extremely lucky that it did, but again, it’s just the risk of running together.”
Regardless, the two felt strongly about running together.
“We care about the same initiatives,” Runnels said. “That’s one of the reasons we felt so strongly about running together, even though we knew that it might not necessarily work out for both of us. But then it did.”
The IEC used a ranked-choice voting system, which has been standard practice since fall 2023. In the presidential race, the lowest-performing candidate was eliminated in each round, and their second-place votes were redistributed to the remaining candidates.
Annika Johnson ’28, a member of the IEC, voiced her support for the ranked-choice voting system in creating a fair election during this cycle, especially since SA’s 2024 student body presidential election required a revote following campaign guideline violations.
“I’m definitely a proponent of rank choice voting in all elections,” she said. “It’s definitely a more modern push and something that I see as beneficial.”
Alexis Paraschiv ’29 reacted to the results of the presidential and senate elections, sympathizing with her friends who did not win.
“Obviously, I’m upset that my friends didn’t get the wins because I’m rooting for them, and I voted for them — Bobby, Kaitlyn, Pranavi, Matthew, Rachna,” Paraschiv said. “But congratulations to those who did win. They certainly deserve it, and I hope they do well.”
Paraschiv hopes that the candidates who won succeed in making the changes they discussed in their campaigns.
“A lot of them were vouching for free laundry, so I expect at least something to be happening about that,” she said. “Paying six dollars for laundry is ridiculous.”
SA President Zoe Wang ’25 M.P.P. ’26 shared her optimism for the newly elected representatives in the days and weeks to come.
“We’re so excited to have all of our new senators and class president join us,” Wang said. “We’re excited to see what they do.”
