With the end of the academic year approaching, the Student Government Association held elections to fill 18 open positions, including president and vice president, in preparation for the next school year. SGA announced the results of the election on Monday.
SGA elected an entirely new cabinet. The newly elected treasurer and secretary are Gelline De Guzman and Courtney Renz respectively. The newly elected vice president is Erica Colavito, and Lauren Fuhring will assume the position of president next year.
"It's exciting. I know my plate is going to be full, but for me it's worth it," said Fuhring. "I like being busy and at least I know my plate is going to be full with things that are substantial and meaningful to me, so I'm fine with that."
Fuhring is not short on experience. She has been a member of SGA since being elected liaison to the class of 2015 in October of her freshman year, and served as vice president this past year.
"It is not that huge of a transition because Vinny and I, even though he was president and I was vice president, had a partnership more than anything else," said Fuhring. "It prepared me for anything that can come my way this upcoming year. I feel pretty prepared for things that can come, but obviously I can't expect all of the unexpected, but I'm trying to make sure everything is organized internally so we can handle anything that comes our way."
In addition to a new cabinet, SGA also elected 10 new senators at large. The new senators are Megan Patel with 77 votes, Frank Albergo with 72 votes, Uma Joshi with 62 votes, Adam Steck with 61 votes, Anthony Darakjy with 55 votes, Sujil Maharajan 53 votes, Vivek Pandey 51 votes, Danielle Wankmuller 51 votes, Breanna Little 46 votes and Joshua Luster 44 votes.
Students may have noticed less campaigning during this year's elections. The lack of campaigning is primarily due to most students running unopposed. The cabinet ran completely unopposed, and only 11 students ran for 10 available senator at large positions.
SGA also struggled to fill many school senator positions. SGA was able to fill the position of ASB senator with Brandon Smith, but the position for SSHS senator still remains open, and two other positions, CA senator and SSHGS senator, were won by write-in votes. Fuhring is not quite positive as to how these positions will be filled, but said they will most likely attempt to fill them during the elections next fall.
According to Fuhring, there are not too many new faces joining SGA at this point in time. The organization is made up mostly of younger students who want to continue to work with SGA through the following year.
"Our Senate is mostly made up of freshmen, they're going to be sophomores. They're all really, really motivated," said Fuhring. "It's a really good class and I know they're going to keep doing great things, so I'm not worried at all."
In fact, many of Fuhring's plans for SGA involve continuing events and plans formed by this year's SGA members, including the 5K Run with Color, which SGA hopes to turn into an annual event, and the Dean's List Dinner, which has successfully occurred the past two years.
However, Fuhring also wants to continue creating new events to get SGA's name on students' radar. One of the new events Fuhring mentioned was a paint party, an event that SGA has been trying to implement for a while and hopes to achieve next year.
"We're just trying to get our name out there, but more importantly, make sure we're doing everything that the students want us to do for them," said Fuhring.
She hopes that making students more aware of the events and changes that SGA is working on will encourage them to feel more comfortable with coming to SGA with any problems they may have.
Fuhring said that, in the past, SGA has had success in fixing problems that students have voiced to them. These problems include issues with housing registration, which was recently revamped, as well as problems with class registration for athletes, which SGA hopes to solve by giving athletes priority registration in the near future.
New members will be sworn in at an inauguration ceremony on May 4.
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cmitche3@ramapo.edu
