Student Anisha Faruk has been elected for presidency at the Oxford University. According to bdnews.com, she won all three rounds of voting at an annual event held in the University’s Weston Library.
Anisha alias Padma, is a final-year history student at the Queen’s College campus, London. Her father, Faruk Ahmed is a retired Bangladesh Army major. Anisha also served as the former co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club and was the ex-editor in Chief of the University’s leading student newspaper.
Throughout the competition, Anisha went head-on with her competitors Ellie Milne-Brown and Ivy Manning, of the Aspire Panel and independence candidacy respectively. Anisha herself represented Oxford State.
The winning participant defeated Ellie in the second round; the latter only received 1022 votes in total in comparison to Anisha’s 1240. Ivy only received 1095 and was later wiped out in the finals when Anisha’s total was boosted to 1529. This gave her a total of 50% of the overall votes.
Roughly 20% of the entire student body voted in the elections. This number was a record-breaking turnout, beating the previous record which had been set in 2013 with 4,494 collective voters.
In a question and answer session regarding her campaign, Anisha said: “I think the diversity of our slate is its strength.
“We all come from different parts of student life, from student politics to theatre to sport so I think we represent a lot of students in that between us we’ve experienced the breadth of student life and we can bring that representation to the SU.”
Founded in 1961 as the Oxford University Student Representative Council, the student body is committed to facilitating connections between students and university staff and officials, including regional councils and the government.
By Manisha Bhanot
