The president of the Student Government Association must have a strong vision and clear goals in mind while in office, and that mindset starts with campaigning.

More importantly, the president and the vice president need to know how to maneuver the SGA in order to make their well-established visions a reality.

SGA presidential candidate and Saginaw sophomore Marie Reimers has that vision, and her running mate, Croswell senior Patrick O'Connor, knows the inner-workings of the SGA.

For those reasons, this editorial board endorses them.

Their opponents, Center Line graduate student Jonathan Schuler and Westland graduate student Darby Hollis have the best of intentions, of course, but they simply do not have the experience or the SGA know-how to be able to run the organization effectively.

Especially considering Hollis has had no SGA experience whatsoever.

On top of the lack of experience, there's just no way to know what we would get out of a Schuler/Hollis administration, especially since they're running with no clear goals, ideas or platform, for that matter.

Schuler's ideas are vague at best, and seem to rely more on finding consensus in some ways rather than being a decisive leader and building consensus.

While coming to a consensus might sound nice, it's not realistic.

If Schuler wants to make sure everybody is in agreement before moving forward with anything, he'll look back at the end of his presidency and see that he'd done a whole lot of talking with minimal action.

He said in meeting Sunday with our editorial board that he didn't want to address specific projects in his platform, because he didn't want people to think he was running for office in order to only pay attention to projects near and dear to his heart.

Although that sounds considerate of him, that's mostly just worrisome.

Who wants to follow a leader with no ideas? How are we supposed to know what improvements he wants to make on behalf of the student body if he won't state any goals?

It's not surprising that Schuler left the SGA debate last week with little support – there's nothing to support about somebody who doesn't have a game plan.

Reimers and O'Connor, on the other hand, have laid out a plan that includes the establishment of a women's and gender center, a bike sharing program for those who spend a lot of time on campus, and a pledge to encourage administrators not to invest money with companies that have poor track records when it comes to environmental sustainability.

Reimers has taken some criticism, especially from Schuler, for pushing "pet projects" on her platform — and we have some concerns as well — but at least she presents us with an idea of what her presidency might look like.

Now, we don't think Reimers campaign is flawless. She's going to have to take great care to separate herself from the development of the women's center, because she's very passionate about the topic. She'll need to learn to delegate and let go of the reigns if that project is going to be a success.

Having a strong vice presidential candidate is a huge help, too.

In fact, O'Connor being on Reimers' ticket is a great relief. Not only is he well-versed and personable, his consistent involvement with SGA will be a breath of fresh air after cycling through three vice presidents this year. O'Connor will bring prestige back to the position that's been lost during this year's antics.

Whoever wins will have some huge shoes to fill. Macomb junior and current SGA President Justin Gawronski has opened the doors of communication between the SGA, students and the administration, achieved some lofty goals that have given students a reason to have faith in him, and followed through on his campaign promises.

Though neither ticket's reign will be identical to Gawronski's performance, we'd like to see the same open lines of communication and forward-thinking strategies continued, and we believe the Reimers/O'Connor ticket will keep SGA moving in the right direction.