31 students were recently elected to the Vanderbilt Student Government Senate for the 2025-2026 academic year. The senate, one of VSG’s three branches, is designed to be a diverse representation of Vanderbilt’s student body. Senators are elected from each residence hall, housing accommodation and academic school.
The Senate still has four vacant seats, which VSG attempted to fill through an additional round of senate applications that were reviewed by the Speaker of the Senate and the Deputy Speaker of the Senate.
Senior Soham Saraf, president of VSG, said the Senate is unable to act like a true democracy because of the vacant seats, but he hopes for them to be filled soon.
“We’re not actually operating like a democracy in that situation [because not all of the senator positions were filled], but ultimately, we want to be able to have students participate in these processes,” Saraf said.
Senior Aarya Morgaonkar, senator for Alumni Lawn, wants to focus on expanding mental health advocacy and monitoring accessibility to amenities with the closing of Commodore Pizza Kitchen and Branscomb Hall.
“Students come to me a lot, especially on some parts of campus where they don’t have access to food late at night,” Morgaonkar said. “So, it’s just going to be listening to what people tell me and then trying to enact that in the Senate.”
Some of the Senate’s most notable recent initiatives include Experience Vanderbilt, extended Munchie Mart hours and the installation of Narcan medication across campus. This year, a large focus will be put on institutionalizing a fund that supports students who wish to take gap years.
In recent years, VSG has struggled with accusations of unjust executive actions and disagreements surrounding the vetoes of bills. Saraf emphasized the large number of senators who will be serving for the first time. He said he hopes to help the new senators realize the full potential of their role.
“I want to make sure that all of them know the sky is the limit,” Saraf said. “We have the ability to create initiatives that ultimately get institutionalized and have a lot of funding. I think that’s a really valuable experience that students want to have, and I think the Senate is a great opportunity to do that.”
Junior William Song, VSG speaker of the senate, said he is excited about the new senators’ ambition.
“We had a great group of people apply to run — very passionate, very enthusiastic, very driven and motivated to really run and represent the student body. Our purpose is to, number one, serve as representatives of our constituents,” Song said.
Having served as a senator in his sophomore year, Saraf said he believes the senate’s lack of productivity can be attributed to an increased political influence, both within VSG and on a broader scale of the Vanderbilt community. However, Saraf said he hopes to use his past experiences to improve the senate and VSG as a whole.
“The senate has become overly bureaucratic and not incredibly productive,” Saraf said. “But we’re trying to make sure that there are some structural changes that can be introduced this year for the senate to become a more productive branch of student government.”
Both Song and Saraf emphasized the importance of communication across the entire organization. VSG consists of 120 students, and Saraf said he hopes to implement new forms of communication to ensure transparency.
“We want to make sure that the Senate knows what’s going on in the committee, so we’re going to have a senate committee liaison system where a senator will sit in on committee meetings,” Saraf said. “They’ll be able to talk about [the committee’s] initiatives in the senate and potentially introduce resolutions that would support whatever initiatives the committee is trying to implement.”
Along with increased internal transparency, Saraf said VSG will look to increase general student body involvement with its processes. Both Saraf and Song expressed a desire to hold more town hall meetings and have more opportunities to hear student feedback and concerns.
“We’re definitely going to be doing more [town halls] with the senators [and] with the committee members, trying to make sure that we’re present within the campus and always getting feedback,” Saraf said.
