After a three-day long voting period last week, 400 freshmen selected Paige Aanestad from among four candidates as their Undergraduate Student Government class president.

USG also announced freshmen Samantha Connolly Nutting and Josh Surver as class senators and freshman Tyler Trudell as a residential senator. Four candidates ran for freshman class president, eight students ran for two class senator positions and one candidate ran for the residential senator position.

Junior Damien Mishlitsch, USG elections and credentials committee chairperson, said this was an unusually high number of students running for the freshman class offices.

“We offered students a chance to sign up to run during the freshman orientation, and I think that played a part in this,” Mishlitsch said.

USG also experimented with using a polling booth for this election instead of sending out electronic ballots. Mishlitsch said the booth, which was located in Koch Commons, was successful, and the spring elections will likely offer a polling booth as well.

Aanestad said the polling booth process worked smoothly, and that she appreciated the chance to encourage passing students to stop and vote.

“I think it helps the candidates to meet the students, and I know I really liked that,” Aanestad said.

Approximately 400 freshmen voted last Wednesday through Friday. Although the number of votes was consistent with past fall elections, Mishlitsch said this is the first semester in recent memory that filled solely freshman positions.

“For the past few years, there were also a few junior positions that were open,” Mishlitsch said. “It’s a good number for only having a freshman vote … we had a constant flow of people voting.”

Aanestad said she was in shock when she got the call Sunday evening, but said she is excited to get the freshman class more involved in what St. Thomas has to offer.

“I’ve been talking to girls in my hall and in my dorm, and a lot of them say they are shy about joining interesting clubs because there seem to be more upperclassmen involved,” Aanestad said. “If you’re afraid to join, I want to make it easier, probably through more activity fairs.”

Although the numbers follow past trends, freshman Alex Chadwick said he expected a little more participation from his class.

“That’s about half the class,which I guess is pretty good, but I think we could probably get more students out to vote,” Chadwick said. “We got an email about it about a week in advance, but if there were fliers in the hallways and in the dorms, I think it’d definitely help out a lot.”

Anastasia Straley can be reached at stra0669@stthomas.edu.