Jeeves Rohilla has been announced as the next postgraduate president of the Students’ Union (SU) following a two-week delay due to election irregularities.

A PhD student in theology and the current president of Lucy Cavendish MCR, Rohilla ran on a platform of reducing college wealth inequality, improving affordability for students, and supporting international students.

The SU uses a ‘Single Transferable Vote’ system, meaning that students can rank as many candidates as they like and their vote may be transferred to a lower-ranked candidate during rounds of elimination. Rohilla thus won in the third round with 1161 votes.

Sonia Fereidooni, a PhD student in digital humanities whose campaign focused on divestment and strengthening ties with activist groups, came second with 1121 votes. Olivia-Chineze Riddle, a linguistics student whose core promise was ending master’s application fees, was eliminated in the second round.

The postgraduate results were delayed after one of the candidates, Roman Shainskyi, was disqualified for breaching election rules. The SU found that he had repeatedly interfered with the voting platform on other students’ devices, and had engaged in “an aggressive campaigning style where he would not leave students alone until he saw them voting for him”.

The candidate has strongly denied voting for other students, and blamed the complaints on “pro-Palestine activists” who disagreed with his programme of ending the SU’s involvement in “politics” and focusing on expanding employment opportunities for students in the AI and cryptocurrency sectors.

Rohilla also received a brief campaigning ban after appearing in a video on the official University Instagram account. The SU concluded that he had not deliberately breached its rules, and had quickly sought to redress the situation. However, they acknowledged that the exposure may have given Rohilla a “significant advantage”.

Reacting to his victory, Rohilla told Varsity: “I just can’t wait to get started! I want this to be a moment of change, a clear declaration from Cambridge students that we need to challenge the current Cambridge system, with its rising rent prices and clear lack of affordability for students.”

The other election results were announced on 26 February, with Melanie Benedict winning the undergraduate presidency. Sarah Misraoui, Tallulla Harris, and Stella Wilkinson were elected as the new vice-presidents, while Bethany Watson was chosen as university councillor. A referendum on whether to update the SU’s constitution, known as the ‘Articles of Association’, also passed.

At 18%, the turnout was around the same as last year, which saw a significant increase from the usual 10% participation.

Asked about how he planned to prepare for the role, Rohilla said that the groundwork began “a year ago when I became Lucy MCR president”.

The candidate continued: “In that role, and throughout the election campaign, speaking to hundreds of students across colleges, I have seen clearly the urgent need to improve the cost of living for our students. Cambridge is one of the most expensive cities in the UK, and if the University is serious about widening access, making Cambridge affordable for its students needs to be a priority.

“I look forward to working with the University over the next year to improve financial accessibility for Cambridge students across the 31 colleges,” he added.