An unlikely candidate sprung up in the midst of the ASB president elections when voting started on Feb. 13. Although he had not asked for it, junior Araz Ordubadi was “nominated” by his classmates without his knowledge, and before he knew it, a movement began.

“All of a sudden, everybody had posters of me and they were distributing them around the school. They gave them to other people and even put them in classrooms,” Ordubadi said.

Although this was a surprise to Ordubadi, he had initially been interested in applying for president.

“I asked if I could run, but I was told I needed a semester of Leadership,” Ordubadi said.

Despite the fact that his nomination had been denied, Ordubadi’s peers took it upon themselves to make him the president. During lunch, junior Jeremy Woods went to the library and created the masterpiece that became the Ordubadi campaign poster.

“I created the poster because I knew Araz would be annoyed. I had no idea that it was going to start a movement,” Woods said.

After the distribution of the posters, Ordubadi’s peers went to the ballots and “voted” for their new candidate. They crossed off the names of nominees Lucas Gilmour and Heather Lee, created a new box with Ordubadi’s name and checked it.

Through all the chaos, an important question can be brought up about the future of ASB elections: whether or not student nominations will be a part of the process in picking the new ASB president in the future.

“It is what’s in the constitution; it’s what has been here before I was here,” Leadership adviser Nicole Carter said. “And the reality is, unless you’re a student who’s been a class coordinator at a higher level, or in leadership, students don’t understand the ins and outs of [the responsibilities of ASB presidents].”

However, Carter added that she was not completely opposed to a write-in candidate for the future.

“I would just need to see. Show me your qualifications, can we move in that direction, how so? I would never just come in and be, like, it’s absolutely never going to happen. We need to have discussions around that and see what that would look like,” Carter said.

“If Araz was nominated I think he would have made a very strong presidential candidate regardless if he had taken leadership” said Kent Augenstein, one of Ordubadi’s peers.