Elections for Kennesaw State’s Student Government Association began on Monday, March 11, with two teams running for presidential and vice presidential positions and 20 others running for senate positions.
Candidates for SGA president include international business major Samuel Brand and political science major Matthew Weese. Their running mates are Tariq Bradford, a double major in business management and marketing, and Baxter Ray, a political science major.
The senate candidates will represent various colleges.
Weese has held three positions in the SGA and has held several positions in other university organizations such as the Student Union of Universal Peace and Rights and the Presidential Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity among several others.
“I hope to bring senses of passion, purpose and accountability to SGA — all things we have been consistently lacking for quite some time,” Weese said. “No one comes to or interacts with SGA because it hasn’t given them a reason to.”
Weese went on to explain that he wants the SGA to work more for the students at KSU.
Weese said that he hopes to address several issues on campus, including the lack of diversity training among faculty, transparency within the SGA, food diversity on both campuses and student involvement in the KSU administration’s decision-making process.
“The first issue at KSU that must be addressed is the absence of students truly feeling heard when advocating for causes directly affecting them,” Weese said. “This includes having little student involvement and clarity in KSU’s decision-making processes and having students’ alternative solutions to pressing issues such as Wi-Fi, parking and housing not being taken seriously.”
Brand had similar sentiments on the SGA’s lack of involvement in the KSU community.
“Tariq and I hope to revitalize SGA and what it stands for — to the students and to us,” Brand said. “We want to bring about transparency and accountability, and we hope that as a result, students will see SGA more for what it should be — their voice, their support and their peers.”
Brand said that, if elected, he hopes to address the quality of KSU’s advisement programs. In addition to certain departments lacking an appropriate adviser, Brand said that some advising sessions have led students to completing classes that they are not required to take.
Brand said that he has experience with politics that led him to where he is now.
“My dream was [originally] to be an engineer, but after joining Model United Nations, I fell in love with international policy,” Brand said. “I’ve now competed in four conferences with the MUN team, one of which was international in Bucharest, Romania.”
Ray, vice presidential candidate and Weese’s running mate, said that one of his focuses is on-campus dining services, including reviewing meal plan options to make sure that they are “beneficial, not wasteful.”
Bradford, Brand’s running mate, focused on KSU officials’ lack of transparency and accountability.
“KSU students have a right to know what is occurring within their university, especially those issues which occur on the campus itself,” Bradford said.
There are 13 sections in the SGA senate with 20 candidates running for election. The sections are Architecture, Coles College of Business, Engineering and Engineering Technology, Non-Traditional Students, Humanities and Social Sciences, the Honors College, Science and Mathematics, American Minorities, the University College, Computing and Software Engineering, International Students, Registered Student Organizations and Treasury.
Elections for the SGA will run from March 11 through March 18 and can be accessed through the SGA page on OwlLife.
