Our College Park secures SGA presidency, students pass divestment referendum 

Editor’s Note: Riona Sheikh is a former freelance writer for The Black Explosion.

University students voted to pass the divestment referendum, rejected the Health Center fee and Our College Park’s Dhruvak Mirani secured Student Body President, according to election results released by the SGA Elections Commission today.

With over 5,500 student votes, the highly controversial divestment referendum passed, with 35% of students voting against the referendum, according to SGA elections data. It passes despite the student organization, TerpsVoteNo, using food and drink to lobby their peers against divestment, The Black Explosion previously reported.

The referendum is a non-binding call for the university and the University System of Maryland to divest from companies facilitating violence anywhere in the world, notably in Palestine, according to the referendum.

The referendum to add a fee for the university’s Health Center narrowly failed with a difference of 241, according to election results. The fee would have gone toward eliminating out-of-pocket costs for some Health Center services, according to the referendum.

Mirani overwhelmingly won the student body president seat, taking a majority of votes, securing a place for the Our College Park ticket, according to SGA elections data. 

The ticket’s top issues included: keeping ICE out of the university, minimizing police at mental health emergencies and providing, “transparency regarding non-student affiliated protests & rallies,” according to the campaign’s platform.

“People know that I work hard, and I think that’s reflected in the win,” said Mirani in an interview with The Black Explosion. “I’m very grateful to everybody who supported me and also to those who didn’t vote for me. I intend to be representative for all students, not just those who supported me,” Mirani said.

In a closer race than the presidency, JusticeUMD’s Riona Sheikh took the executive vice presidency. Iman Ali, also from JusticeUMD, will be the SGA’s vice president for financial affairs. 

“Everyone on [JusticeUMD’s] ticket has been flyering so hard, we’ve been campaigning so hard,” said executive vice president elect Riona Sheikh in an interview with The Black Explosion.

“We are so, so happy to see that [the] divestment referendum passed,” Sheikh said. “We just don’t want to see our university complacent to human rights violations and to see  that finally, we’re making big strides towards actually having that as a reality.”