After weeks of campaigning and multiple rounds of a reformed election system, Preyas Sinha ’24 has emerged as the 2023-2024 school year president. Sinha focused his campaign on “making realistic policy goals not aiming to completely overhaul systems” and focusing on small ideas and achievable goals that he believes can genuinely be accomplished by the end of his term in the coming school year.
The biggest part of Sinha’s campaign was being down to earth and grounded in implementing small, attainable changes, even if it only slightly improves student’s quality of life at Deerfield. These small changes, he says, are what he thinks was the main driver which separated him from his other candidates in the election and the following runoff.
As highlighted at the presidential debate, Sinha’s goals for the coming school year include bigger bowls in the dining hall, changing the second sport requirement for athletics concentration co-curricular activities to accommodate students taking art co-curricular activities, and closed-door parietals for seniors in Spring Term. Sinha is an experienced leader, having served on the Deerfield student council for three years. Even when he first ran for Deerfield’s student council his freshman year, becoming president was something that he “thought about a lot.” His passion for this position comes from wanting to add value to the community in his own way, creating change in policies for the benefit of Deerfield students, and being a “voice of the people” as his way of influencing campus and leaving a legacy.
This year, the presidential elections looked very different from previous years. Jerry Huang ’23, this year’s student body president, oversaw the election process. Additionally, elections this year consisted of a two-round election process where if, after the first round, no student had received a simple majority (over 50 percent of the votes), a runoff election between the top two candidates would occur. Last year, the election ran on a choice system where each student had to rank their top three candidates. Huang said the main reasons behind this change were to simplify and improve voting integrity. Huang described the 2022 system as one where candidates “strategized” on who to vote for so that the votes were split in a way that allowed their first choice candidate to win. Because of this, he says the system received “backlash because people preferred to vote for one candidate instead of three” While both elections aimed to achieve the same goal of “voting for a candidate that a lot of people liked,” Huang said the simple majority required for a candidate to win created a more just and equitable system.
Last year, the election ran on a choice system where each student had to rank their top three candidates. Huang said the main reasons behind this change were to simplify and improve voting integrity. Huang described the 2022 system as one where candidates “strategized” on who to vote for so that the votes were split in a way that allowed their first choice candidate to win. Because of this, he says the system received “backlash because people preferred to vote for one candidate instead of three.” While both elections aimed to achieve the same goal of “voting for a candidate that a lot of people liked,” Huang said the simple majority required for a candidate to win created a more fair system.
Another aspect that differed from previous years were the presidential speeches. This year, they were held during a school meeting, while in the past they were held during optional evening or community time events. Furthermore there was a debate between the two runoff candidates. Huang says this debate “evened out the playing field between the two candidates” as there could be a large difference in the percentage of votes each candidate received in the initial round and a debate could help to even out this difference. Huang also said it “allowed voters to access more information about each of [the] candidates” so that the student body had the opportunity to make a more informed decision about who they voted for. He acknowledged that the 3-minute presidential speech alongside Instagram campaigns only did so much and that the debate aimed to add an additional layer of information.
Huang’s hopes that a similar system to this year’s is used in the 2024 election. He thinks that the process this year ran smoothly and achieved his goals. He says that “the biggest challenge with a two round voting system is ensuring that in the second round the poll receives the same number of submissions… and there was a pretty even number across the first poll and the second poll so the voter turnout stayed relatively the same.” So, his concern proved to be merely a worry.
Regarding next year’s presidency, Huang hopes that Sinha “continues to think outside of the box and think ambitiously.” He says that policies such as free laundry required a lot of “persistence and the ability to think big.” He also hopes that Sinha will foster strong relationships with members of the Student Life Office so that he can create actionable change and fulfill Sinha’s campaign goal to serve as a “voice for the people.”