Cornell’s Graduate and Professional Student Assembly presented its 2025 election results — including results of a ballot question about divestment — during their final meeting of the year on Monday.
Graduate student Nicholas Brennan, current executive vice president of GPSA, was elected to be the next president in a sweeping victory, garnering nearly five times as many votes as his two competitors, Bhagvat Patel and Mario Keputa.
The election results also revealed broad support for divestment from the voting graduate student body, with about two-thirds of voters believing Cornell should divest from weapons manufacturers.
The divestment ballot question was modeled after the Spring 2024 Student Assembly referendum, in which 69.3 percent of voters — representing just under 50 percent of the undergraduate student body — believed that Cornell should divest from weapons manufacturers.
The question read “Should Cornell University follow its 2016 Guidelines for Divestment and divest from the following weapons manufacturers: BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and ThyssenKrupp?”
The question was tacked onto the GPSA election ballot in an “executive decision” made by incumbent president, Ocean Karim, who single-handedly represented the elections committee this cycle as the only current executive council member not running for election.
In GPSA’s ballot results, 66.8 percent of voters cast their ballot in favor of divestment. Only 18.85 percent of voters believed that Cornell should not divest, and the remaining 14.35 percent of voters abstained. There were 955 votes in total, representing around 10 percent of Cornell’s graduate student body.
Concerns were raised in the meeting regarding the accuracy of the results in reflecting the graduate student body’s opinions on divestment.
Graduate student Sara Raimondi, college of veterinary medicine representative, challenged the validity of the results in light of the small sample size and a “total lack of communication or transparency from GPSA” surrounding the addition of the question to the ballot.
“I wasn’t aware this was going on. I know others weren’t aware this was going on,” Raimondi said during Karim’s presentation of the results.
Raimondi also expressed worry that the level of communication may have skewed results by preventing groups — listing Hillel as an example — from campaigning against the divestment vote, in which case she believed GPSA “would have seen different results.”
Karim rebutted her concerns, explaining that there was “statistically sound significance” in the results, since only about 600 responses were required to represent the population with a low margin of error.
He also denied Raimondi’s claim that the question had not been brought up in previous meetings, but acknowledged that after the vote was tabled in March, he “didn’t get the chance to have people vote on it overall” with the “election time period getting closer and closer.”
In an interview with The Sun, President-elect Brennan provided context for the seemingly low voter turnout. He stated that 10 percent is a “good turnout for graduate students,” highlighting a significant uptick in engagement from the 2024 election, which saw around 300 fewer total votes.
“I’m really optimistic about where GPSA is going,” Brennan said. “I think GPSA is making leaps and bounds to realizing its full capacity as a part of the shared governance system, so I’m really excited.”
Brennan referred to the results as a good “temperature check” of graduate student opinions, but seeks to drive more concrete action surrounding divestment during his term, namely through collaboration with the Student Assembly, Employee Assembly and Faculty Senate.
“Our goal here isn't just to pass statements. It's to get binding action,” Brennan said.
Kate Turk is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is an assistant news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board. She can be reached at kturk@cornellsun.com.
