UND students have elected Gracie Lian and Matthew Ternus as president and vice president, respectively, of the student body.
Lian, Grand Forks, and Ternus, Rogers, Minn., will take over for outgoing student body president and vice president Erik Hanson and Kaleb Dschaak. The pair will lead students through the 2019-20 school year.
It's the second consecutive year that a Grand Forks native has been elected to lead the UND student body.
Lian is a sophomore studying English, political science and honors. Ternus also is a sophomore majoring in secondary education.
Each has experience with student government leadership as senators and Lian has served on the North Dakota Student Association, which serves students across the state.
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Both say they are excited to get to work and happy they won the election.
"It was really surreal, at least for me, I don't think it's totally sunk in yet," Lian said.
"It felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders," Ternus added. "I'm just really pumped to get ready to work."
The duo beat out two other teams for the leadership roles with 1,848 votes. Coming in second with 856 votes were Taylor Schaubert and Torie Danielson and rounding out the voting were Cora Odoala and Saphyra Jeudy with 207 votes.
UND students also elected more than a dozen senators.
Ternus said the pair hope to continue to develop a relationship between the city of Grand Forks and the campus. They also want to get more free menstrual products into bathrooms across campus
"I think some big things that we're excited to get working on include getting more open educational resources to campus and helping students with the affordability of college," he said. "There's a lot of great stuff that we're looking at and we're excited to see it happen."
