On Monday, Feb. 19 the first of three elections began for the Series 1 candidates of the Student Government Association. Series 1 positions include President, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Alternate Student Trustee, and Chief Commissioner.
Below are the 10 candidates’ responses to what the most important part of their platform is, or why students should vote for them, at the Meet the Candidates Event on Feb. 19, in the Student Center pit.
President:
Luke Reed
Sophomore, finance and management major, entrepreneurship minor.
“Creating a culture of accountability. So, what I mean by creating a culture of accountability is people understand what’s expected of them. It’s made known to them what was expected and what they act on whether that be planning ahead or working towards that goal, whether it be individual or group efforts.”
Zackary Brown
Junior, philosophy and public relations major.
“The most important part of my platform is community development. I really do think that in my role, especially as a community assistant here on campus, part of my ambition, part of my drive is to build a more positive and impactful community.”
Executive Vice President:
Ezekiel Abrams
Sophomore, accounting and finance major.
“I think just ensuring that clubs feel as though they have someone to consistently go to and ask these questions… or it’s like creating spaces where other students also feel welcome. I think that’s something that I really strive to do.”
Chief Financial Officer:
Molly Fitzpatrick
Sophomore, finance major.
“Students should vote for me because I’m a really good listener. And a positive is that I’ve always been very mathematically minded so I want to make sure that everyone is kind of fulfilling their goals and what they want to do as a club, but also doing it in the most mature and smart manner.”
Mario Barone
Junior, political science and history major.
“So I’m really running on two things, transparency and accessibility to the funds. Okay, so the first one, transparency is about letting the student body have more of a connection to the funds themselves by making everything public…And the second thing is accessibility and once you open up the availability for people to receive funding through the club’s social projects, and overnight travel program, by allowing people to do more presentations, so they can get more money because I was talking to some people on campus and they said it was a big concern is like they have access to this funding, but they can only do one thing.”
Alternate Student Trustee:
Ali Ishage
Freshman, undecided.
“We have people, all scholars, all races, all ethnic backgrounds, economic statuses, so on and so forth. And so just being able to represent them as a whole as a community and getting as much engagement as possible in order to get back the concerns.”
Aniket Shafin
Sophomore, law and justice and psychology major.
“There’s good communication going on between the trustees and student body. We are not only talking about the Senate, really going outside of the Senate. I’m talking about the wider range of students. They’re not coming to the Senate and might not want to represent their cause. And I do have a policy for that.”
Chief Commissioner:
Daniel O’Brien
Freshman, philosophy, and disaster science major.
“The most important part of my platform is probably just running on the basis of making sure that student government is kind of meeting that ethical code of contact between government and the body and governance.”
Theo Young
Sophomore, law and justice and political science major.
“The most important part of my platform is honesty and being straightforward. I think there could be a lot of confusion and dissertation when it comes to SGA sometimes and the policies that go behind it so I’m really big on being open and being straightforward.”
Aliyan Aamir
Junior, biomedical engineering major.
“I just want to promote more transparency with everything that’s occurred and just be a resource available, because I believe the Chief of Commission is always a resource that’s there for the bylaws and I just want to be that resource.”
Photos by Madison Miller
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