By Madeline Sidgwick, Evelyn Fernandez-Jarvis, Sophie Fairey, Ruby Saggers, Ella Hearn-Zhang
The Orbital had the pleasure of attending the results night for the 2025 Student Union Elections. Royal Holloway students had the opportunity to vote for their 2025-2026 SU President, Vice President for Education, Vice President for Societies and Sports and Vice President for Wellbeing and Diversity. There are 5 places that are key to understand here. Firstly, we have our Student Reps. This role is about improving students’ academic experiences and there is one position for each main department here at Royal Holloway. These would be the people that you would turn to
if there was an academic issue with your course and you needed your voice to be heard to improve your own, present and future students that study here. Putting yourself forward alone is an achievement in itself and this year we saw many campaigns for the different sabbatical positions that were truly amazing. Ahead of the results being announced we interviewed candidates going for the roles and asked them the following questions and here is the consensus we found!
- What is your best advice for anyone running a campaign on campus?
- Have a solid team around you is essential, especially when such an intense campaign period can sometimes be hard. Having a positive team is always a good way of keeping spirits high! Candidates also emphasised the huge role played by social media, and how using trending sounds ,as well as catchy slogans, saw them build a rapport with voters. It was also made clear from the interviews that being positive about your opponents is essential, keeping competition healthy and ensuring that false rumour doesn’t come into your campaign is such an important element of keeping up both a good personal image but also ensuring that the entire election process is positive.
- How was it handling such a quick and intense campaign period?
- Most candidates emphasised how the campaign period is both very short and very intense. It was clear that being prepared to be in the library foyer, as well as on students’ instagram pages, is no easy task. Although difficult at times, many of the candidates made clear that being yourself and adding humility/ relatability to the campaign period was essential- this was noticeably mentioned by some of the successful candidates.
- From speaking to students throughout the campaign, what do you think are the main issues that students would like to see improvement on through the next year?
- Many of the candidates referenced the Top 8 Priorities that students were asked to vote on alongside their preferred candidates. These priorities were overall ranked in the order below, so make sure to take note and see if the candidates stick to their priorities!
- More affordable food options on campus
- Reduce deadline stacking for assessment and coursework
- More Financial support for students
- Increase social and study spaces
- More student friendly timetables
- Cheaper and more frequent local transport
- Make SU events more affordable
- Improve parking on the Egham campus
We also had the chance to chat to some of the elected candidates! So here are your leaders of the SU for 2025-2026 and their advice and priorities!
President: Livi-Mae Davies
What is your main priority? Focussing on a range of improvements such as social and study spaces, Livi’s top priority is in relation to student safety in and around campus, for example by improving street lighting.
How have you found the campaign and how are you feeling about tonight? The campaigning was stressful, but also enjoyable because all the candidates were so nice and supportive of each other, creating a community was so important for us. Having had experience as VP Wellbeing and Diversity, Livi mentioned how this helped both with the campaign period as well as nerves on the results evening.
VP sports and societies: David Gollardo-Gonzalez
What is your best advice for anyone running a campaign similar to this one? Having a strong team around you is essential to the campaign, as well as ensuing to be positive towards other candidates even if they are your opponent.
What activities before being elected have helped you along the way? David is both a SU photographer and employee at the Sports Centre. He told us how this helped in both making connections but also when learning how to communicate with students and learn what they actually want from their elected sabbatical officers.
VP Wellbeing and diversity: Vaishnavi Vajja
What is your best advice to people campaigning next year? Honestly, go all out! Everyone is super friendly and is enjoying watching your campaign as much as you are running it.
What is the first thing you are going to do in the role? Get settled in and make plans on how to implement my top priorities: for affordable food on campus, make transport cheaper and more frequent and to have more social and study spaces on campus!
VP Education: Matthew Paterson
- How has the campaign been thus far? Fun, a lot of intensity for one week, online campaigns are much more relaxed than the ones in person, they’re quite intense.
- What are some useful tools you used/picked up in campaigning? Confidence and being yourself is essential! Also don’t be scared to chase people to listen to you in the library foyer.
- Any recommendations or advice for campaigning? Plan a lot, particularly what you’re going to post and what and when, don’t leave things to the last minute, make sure to plan everything, organisation is key!
The Orbital congratulates all of the elected candidates and wishes them the best of luck in their new roles! We hope that this piece is useful to anyone thinking of either running for a position in the SU next year or a committee role in their sport or society in term three.
