The Class of 2026 has elected Sol Choi ’26, Zavier Foster ’26, Kriti Garg ’26, Justin Lee ’26, and Minna Abdella ’26 from a pool of 12 candidates to serve as their Undergraduate Student Government (USG) class councilors.
The USG announced the results to students via email on Friday, Oct. 14. Candidates began campaigning with fliers, social media advertisements, and promotional events beginning Monday, Oct. 2; voting ended on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
Choi grew up in Irvine, Calif. but moved to Korea this past summer before matriculating into the University. Although currently undecided, he hopes to major in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) or politics. Choi expressed his excitement after learning he had been chosen as a 2026 class councilor in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.
“As soon as I got the email, I jumped up from my bed,” Choi said. “You know, like Willy Wonka’s Grandpa.”
He ran for office after seeing the role USG plays in welcoming students to campus.
“All the USG events made me feel at home during orientation,” Choi said. “I wanted to contribute.”
Foster is from Long Island, N.Y., and plans to major in politics. Foster walked onto the Princeton rowing team and said he likes writing poetry, having submitted a few of his pieces for consideration to the Nassau Literary Review. Like Choi, he said he values community and believed he could help to build community best as a class councilor.
“I want to make sure that everyone coming to this school knows immediately that they will have their own group of people,” Foster said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
He said he hopes USG can play a greater role in preventing self-segregation among the student body, fostering community through intramural sports and better promoting public spaces.
“With just the demographic here, there are a lot of minority groups, it’s really easy for some people to feel excluded,” Foster said. “Everyone should feel like they belong.”
Garg, a SPIA major, flew from Odisha, India to attend Princeton. Garg participated in student government during high school.
“My high school’s administration used to call me ‘the feminist,’ and not in a good way,” Garg said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “They used to mean it in a very derogatory sense because I used to call them out on a lot of their sexist policies.”
As an international student, Garg hopes to promote connections between students from a wide range of nationalities.
“Class council is mostly just events,” Garg said. “Through those events, how can we add an international perspective that is beneficial and collaborative? How can we make this a more enriching experience?”
Lee is also a SPIA major and an international student. He was born in Seoul, Korea, but he moved to Toronto, Canada in 2015. His main goal is to institute a mentorship program between upperclassmen, graduate students, and professors.
“The biggest thing that makes us nervous is that we don’t know what’s to come,” he said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “We need that insight from upperclassmen who have been in that position, whether that be course selection, extracurriculars, or anything like that.”
Abdella, a neuroscience major from North Bergen, N.J., said she decided to make student government her sole focus in regard to extracurriculars. She shared a host of propositions she hopes to implement as a 2026 class councilor.
“I look forward to working with my peers and we had some aligning ideas,” Abdella said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “From a formal, which we already started talking about, to one of my ideas, which was having a senior assassin [type of game], but with snow.”
She intends to raise school spirit on campus, specifically throughout the class of 2026.
“The first [high school] I went to there was no school spirit. It was all academics, no sports, just studying,” she said. “School spirit just brings the class together.”
The turnout rate for this year’s election reached 54 percent with a total of 2,610 votes, a decrease of six percent from the election in 2025.
USG posted complete results through the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS).
Rebecca Cunningham is a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached on Instagram @rebecca.g.c or rc0270@princeton.edu.
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