Two pairs of students are running for Vanderbilt Student Government president and vice-president for the 2025-26 school year. This year’s campaigns involve structural changes to VSG and transparency in VSG budgeting and decision making.
As of publication, tickets for student body president and vice president, respectively, include juniors Soham Saraf and Teguono Okotete and sophomores Sevaan Prestipino and Ishan Mahajan. The Prestipino-Mahajan ticket has been deducted 100 signatures for the use of Near Field Communication cards and airdropping for petition signatures during peak hours at Rand Hall.
Voting will open on March 24 at 8 a.m. CDT and will close on March 26 at 12 p.m. CDT.
Saraf, Okotete platform
With the slogan “Chill Guys for VSG,” Saraf and Okotete have focused their platform on creating a more transparent and student-centered VSG while strengthening Vanderbilt’s ties with the greater Nashville area. Their vision for VSG includes increasing student engagement, making budget allocations and meeting notes publicly accessible and hosting monthly events to foster direct student interaction with VSG leadership.
In their campaign outline, Saraf and Okotete said they want to directly address the issues that they believe Vanderbilt students are most concerned about. Their initiatives include expanding dining options to include Taste of Nashville options such as CAVA, Chipotle and Fido, restoring pre-COVID campus amenities, enhancing library study spaces with accessible coffee stations and solving dining hall congestion with better seating and line-flow systems.
The Saraf-Okotete platform also emphasizes transparency as they hope to create a more visible, outward-facing VSG. In an interview with The Hustler, Saraf and Okotete shared their motivation to run. Saraf, who first became involved with VSG as a first-year, expressed his desire to increase efficiency within the organization.
“I was surprised at how inefficient VSG seemed, especially in the Senate — there was no incentive to be a productive member,” Saraf said. “My experience in VSG makes me a qualified candidate to bring effective change.”
Okotete, while new to VSG, has been involved with many organizations on campus. He said he hopes to increase interaction between VSG and students as he sees VSG as the middleman between the general student body and the administration.
“We realized there was a lack of visibility regarding what VSG actually does and how it should operate,” Okotete said. “We want to ensure VSG is entirely focused on students.”
Saraf and Okotete hope to address inefficiencies in VSG decision making.
“We are focused on maximizing the resources we have at our disposal,” Saraf said. “That means making smaller structural adjustments to streamline communication and make VSG more effective.”
Their strategy includes increasing direct engagement with campus media, regularly posting budget updates, reorganizing the VSG executive board to center around committee leadership and expanding the treasury committee.
Saraf and Okotete both expressed interest in strengthening Vanderbilt’s relationship with the greater Nashville community by building partnerships with local non-profits and increasing student engagement in service-learning and volunteer opportunities.
“We want to promote real change that goes beyond just the Vanderbilt campus,” Saraf said.
Per the Nonpartisan Candidate Database for spring 2025, Saraf and Okotete did not submit a preliminary budget by the required deadline on March 17, thus making them ineligible to spend campaign funds, including reimbursable and out-of-pocket expenses. Prestipino and Mahajan submitted a budget that reported $248.64 in total expenditures as of publication.
Prestipino, Mahajan platform
Prestipino and Mahajan did not respond to The Hustler’s request for comment. They detailed their platform summary in the Nonpartisan Candidate Database.
Communicated through core principles that are built on transparency, Prestipino and Mahajan said they envision a VSG connected, student-focused, efficient, and open in its operations. Prestipino and Mahajan said they want the organization to feel like “your friendly neighborhood handyman” through a personal and welcoming approach, maintaining that if elected, they will reach out to student organizations with regular check-ins and provide them with access to their personal phone numbers for streamlined communication.
The Prestipino-Mahajan platform prioritized addressing key student concerns — including ensuring paper towels and menstrual products in every bathroom, extending dining hall hours and improving the affordability of Munchie Mart items.
They already made changes to improve some of these stated weaknesses, and they highlighted their past accomplishments — extending Munchie Mart hours from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT, reducing the cost of Muscle Milks and changing select Suzie’s items from an entrée and a side to just an entrée. They also proposed expanding the pre-registration syllabus program, introducing a second-semester club fair and streamlining the housing selection process to better serve students.
Prestipino and Mahajan emphasized what they view as VSG’s current flaws and dysfunctions in the candidate database.
“Due to its highly inefficient structure, VSG wastes time and energy from students attempting to access its resources and from students internally,” Prestipino and Mahajan wrote.
Prestipino and Mahajan wrote that they aim to restructure VSG’s “unnecessarily bureaucratic hurdles” by establishing a central communication network to ensure Senate and Committee members regularly meet face-to-face to address campus issues and maintain accountability. Leveraging Prestipino’s experience with website development, the candidates emphasized that they will work to resolve issues that involve the website.
“Currently, the VSG website is non-functional,” Prestipino and Mahajan wrote. “This makes it impossible to keep up on current events or get in contact with student government representatives for critical issues.”
Consistent with their principles of transparency, Prestipino and Mahajan maintained that, if elected, they will immediately release all VSG financial records and subsequently follow the monthly release rule. They will also establish a running record of work being done by elected VSG officials to motivate them and hold them accountable.
