The University of Minnesota Undergraduate Student Government elected Fatima Aden and Izaan Rana as the new president and vice president March 6, defeating William Luther and Charley Rathgeber.
Fatima Aden, USG’s next president for the 2026-27 school year and third-year student, said her campaign’s main concern is holding the University’s administration accountable regarding student safety, especially following the longstanding effects of Operation Metro Surge.
“Our main thing was just allowing students to feel more safe on campus, but a specific priority issue or policy issue that we wanted to fix is holding the University accountable for having unclear policies on what ICE can and can’t do on campus,” Aden said.
In a statement, Luther congratulated Aden and Rana, saying he and Rathgeber will proceed to encourage USG to support University students.
“We congratulate Fatima and Izaan on their victory. We thank the hundreds of students who believed in our vision for student advocacy,” Luther said. “Despite this, Charley and I will continue to advocate for students and push for a student government that empowers students’ voices in real and meaningful ways.”
Luther, a fellow third-year, said he ran in the USG presidential election because he noticed students’ voices were not being heard by the University’s administration. Luther said he grew tired of students being left out of key conversations with administrators.
Luther said if he were elected president, he would have encouraged discussion between students and University higher-ups.
Rathgeber, Luther’s running mate, is currently USG’s director of Human Resources. Luther said he saw she was deeply engaged with USG and motivated to change the University.
“She is really involved with our intern program which we’ve seen really great success in engaging freshman students in the work of student government,” Luther said. “She just had this energy that it’s really about getting going like, ‘How do we accomplish something?’”
As Aden and Rana prepare for their administration, Aden said she plans to discuss students’ needs on campus with the University’s administration to ensure USG and administrators are on the same page before officially taking office this summer. This way, they can make sure their campaign’s concerns are being met.
Rana, elected alongside Aden as USG elected vice president, said student groups on campus have not received the necessary funds in order for them to succeed. Student group agency was another one of their campaign pillars.
“What happens a lot of time is that student groups, in order to spread their message, they haven’t had the correct access to funds or other materials they might need to help be successful as a student group,” Rana said. “Our whole job was that we wanted to make it easier to access a lot of these funds.”
Rana said the support they received for their campaign was incredible. Without help from the University community, he said they would not have made it this far.
“It was so amazing seeing so much support from the community,” Rana said. “I can’t even imagine how far we would have gotten if we didn’t have the people behind us that were backing us.”
