Updated: May 12, 2026 at 8:12 p.m.
The Student Government Association elected 11 senators to chair the Senate’s committees at their second meeting of the term Tuesday.
SGA senators promised in their speeches during committee chair elections to recruit more students to the body, increase outreach to student organizations and the student body and bolster transparency regarding SGA actions through their respective committees. Senators also elected Sen. Shadhvi Gowrisankar (CCAS-U) as pro tempore of the Senate, the third highest position in the SGA, who will oversee all legislative committees.
Senators running for chair positions had two minutes to give statements in front of the Senate before senators questioned them about their plans if elected. The Senate then discussed the candidates in executive session before casting secret ballots.
Gowrisankar said her first priority as pro tempore is to fill the 24 vacant seats, which currently leaves more than half the Senate unfilled. She said she wants to fill the vacancies next semester by shifting the SGA’s “culture” to actively recruit students and entice incumbent senators to want to remain in the SGA.
Only three of 16 incumbent SGA senators ran for reelection in April’s elections, the lowest incumbent return rate in three years. Some senators cited frustration with difficulty accomplishing their initiatives this year and a lack of internal support within the SGA as their reason for choosing not to run for reelection in April.
“I think changing the culture, making us want to be friends with each other — it’s foundational,” Gowrisankar said. “We can’t collaborate and advocate for our constituents, our friends, everybody that is in our GW community, if we don’t want to hang out with each other.”
Gowrisankar said she wants to set attendance requirements for committee members to ensure committees are regularly meeting and continue chair reports every Senate meeting where committees share their progress with the Senate to make sure senators are engaged at committee meetings.
The dining and mental health assemblies violated SGA bylaws last term by failing to meet biweekly in fall 2025, which committee chairs attributed to difficulty coordinating schedules and transitioning into their roles as co-chairs.
“I want to implement clear attendance expectations for committees because being on a committee doesn’t really mean much if you’re not showing up and contributing,” Gowrisankar said.
Senators elected Sen. Anya Srivastava (CCAS-U), who ran on a platform of increasing financial transparency to boost students’ trust in the body, as chair of the Financial Services and Allocations Committee. Srivastava said she wants the Finance Committee and Legislative Budget Office — the SGA bodies which manage student organization funding — to host meetings explaining the SGA’s financing process to groups requesting funds along with sending organizations emails explaining the SGA’s rationale when they don’t approve large requests.
“Finance is black and white,” Srivastava said. “There should be no bias and rebuilding trust starts with consistency and genuine engagement with the organizations that we serve.”
Srivastava said she also wants to fund GW College Democrats and GW College Republicans equally to emphasize the finance committee’s goal of impartiality. The finance committee allocated $1,300 to College Democrats out of their $5,876 request, while allocating $1,100 to College Republicans of their requested $3,360 in general allocations for fall 2026.
She also said she plans to create a calendar to better manage when funds are allocated to avoid the body’s funds depleting too early in the semester or going unused, which could prevent student organizations from hosting events they otherwise could have.
Student organizations voiced complaints in March about the University-Wide Programs Fund — a joint fund between the University and the SGA to provide support to student organizations for campus-wide and heritage celebration events — after the UWPF spent almost its entire budget with ten weeks left of the semester. The SGA’s “rollover fund,” or unspent SGA money not used for co-sponsorship funds, has about $100,000 at the end of this semester, according to senators at the meeting Tuesday.
“Everything I stated works towards humanizing the students behind the work that students love to critique, but not fully learn about,” Srivastava said.
Senators elected Sen. Blaize Larson (CCAS-U) to serve as chair of the Committee on Community Advocacy and Inclusion. Larson said he plans to increase the SGA’s relationships with culturally diverse student organizations by regularly attending their events and programming with the intention of understanding their perspectives to inform SGA decision-making processes.
“Too many students feel out of the loop and that is exactly where this committee has the ability to make a difference,” Larson said. “If elected, I would focus on three things — strengthening communication, increasing student engagement and ensuring that advocacy efforts are actually reaching the students that they are meant to serve.”
Senators elected Sen. Madison Wyman (CCAS-G) to serve as the chair of the Graduate Caucus. She said she wants to increase graduate student representation in the Senate given that there are more graduate students than undergraduate students at GW.
Graduate students made up 52.8 percent of the University’s total student population in 2025, according to enrollment data, yet 19 of the 24 vacant seats are for graduate students and only three of the 17 current senators are graduate senators. Seven of the 19 graduate senators in the last Senate term were absent from over half of SGA meetings in fall of 2025, which graduate senators attributed to conflicting night classes, family commitments and professional responsibilities.
“We’re not a monolith as graduate students,” Wyman said. “We’re full time workers, we’re career people, we’re supporting our loved ones. We’re doing a lot of work outside of GW and I think that’s something I’m going to work on to recognize.”
Senators also elected Sen. Saturnino Felix Pajkos (ESIA-U) to serve as the chair of the Student Life Committee. Pajkos said he wants to improve the relationship between the SGA and student body through increasing SGA outreach to student organizations by attending their events and giving organizations lists of SGA resources that could help them.
“I want to see if we can have some of our committee meetings and some of our required attendance not just be in the office in the SGA but having to go to those clubs, those events, get to know students, see how we can best represent them,” Pajkos said.
Senators also elected Sen. Oluwatoni Aina (MSPH-G) as chair of the Women’s Caucus. Aina said she wants the SGA to help women feel supported on campus, potentially through decreasing wait times for safe rides, which she said can take “forever” sometimes.
The Senate elected Sen. Jivan Ramesh (LAW-G) as chair of the Ethics Committee and Assembly on Mental Health, Sen. Cole Bowie (CCAS-U) as chair of the Committee on Physical Facilities and Urban Affairs, Sen. Zachary Brivio (ESIA-U) as chair of the Committee on Education Policy and Sen. Beatriz Salim (CCAS-U) as chair of the Assembly on Dining.
The Senate also appointed Harry Crowley, a sophomore studying economics and international affairs, as director of the Legislative Budget Office after Vice President Aicha Sy said the Senate chose to table his appointment at the last SGA meeting.
The next SGA meeting will be held on June 3 over Zoom.
This post has been updated to correct the following:
The Hatchet incorrectly spelled Sen. Anya Srivastava’s last name. It is spelled Srivastava. We regret this error.
