WITH VIDEO: Two teams begin Student Government Association presidential campaigns
Two campaigns are gearing up to win student votes in the Student Government Association presidential election on April 4.
Shelby Township senior Vincent Cavataio and vice presidential candidate Bryant English, Jackson junior, will face Grand Blanc junior Robert Brooks and his vice presidential candidate, Brighton sophomore Colleen McNeely.
Cavataio is the SGA membership officer and works in communications at Central Michigan University's Off-Campus Programs. English is a newcomer to SGA, but works as the political action committee chairman for the CMU NAACP and is active with College Democrats.
Brooks is SGA’s Student Budget Allocation committee chairman. McNeely is the Governmental Affairs chairwoman and a senator.
There are similarities between both tickets: both want to restructure SGA, which currently has a bicameral legislation with a House and a Senate, to a unicameral body. Both are also emphasizing sustainability, wanting to continue with issues such as recycling on off-campus apartments.
Whereas Brooks said he wants to implement a unicameral system, with 35 undergraduate representatives and 3 graduate student representatives, more or less immediately, Cavataio wants to implement it gradually over the year he is in office.
“The one point where I differ is I would want to take time doing this," Cavataio said. "The goal with making SGA relevant is what is going to be what takes the longest time. It’s nice in theory, but you can’t use it if you don’t have that relevance with your student body.”
Brooks and McNeely stressed creating new work study jobs through programs such as implementing a coat-check at the CMU Bookstore and creating a university bike-share program, both of which would be staffed by students on work studies.
“Right now we give out more work studies than we have on campus,” Brooks said.
McNeely said a bike-share program would also aid in the goal of campus sustainability.
“We would model this off of Northern Michigan University’ bike-share program,” McNeely said. “There would be a number of university-owned bikes that students would be able to check out at no cost. That would be our biggest initiative under the sustainability leg of our platform.”
Cavataio and Brooks said they want to emphasize diversity education and programming on campus, as well as emphasize SGA as a tool to implement student wants and needs.
“We’re trying to build a bottom-up type of thing where the students tell us what they want,” English said while talking about diversity programs. “Do they want to know more about LGBT, do they want to know more about the African American or Asian communities, what do they want?”
Voting will open at 12 a.m. on April 4 on cmich.orgsync.com. Students must register for OrgSync to vote.
Both campaigns linked all information and website links on their campaign Facebook pages, at www.facebook.com/votebrooksmcneely and www.facebook.com/vote.vince.bryant.cmu.sga.
