A close-call election

BY MAVERICK MARCELLANA Staff Writer

The Associated Students Inc. held an Elections Reveal event at the USU South Plaza Thursday with Mitali Jain being announced as Long Beach State’s new ASI president.

In-person and on Instagram live, Jain won the presidential role with 3,007 votes in the election, beating out Fatima Zeferino and Michael A. Stemage II.

To her surprise, the announcement felt “surreal” to Jain as she never expected to be the next ASI president.

As the new president, her mission to students will be to advocate for them, no matter what problems comes to mind.

“I’ll make sure I advocate for students and listen to their concerns, and make sure that they’re going as an individual, mentally, physically and emotionally,” Jain said.

One of the things that she’ll advocate for is Cultural Resource Centers as she believes it is a big issue on campus.

Jain will communicate with the stakeholders to try to meet with students’ basic needs for those resource centers.

Before becoming president, Jain was ASI’s Vice President of Finance, supporting students’ voices and making it heard.

That being said, she intends to continue her work as president to hear out the many problems students may face as the former ASI president Isaac Julian has in the past.

Second-year finance major Samira Flores was one of the students that voted for Jain.

Flores hopes that Jain being a woman of color will bring in more equality for other women in terms of voting.

“I think that she has the skills to help us all kind of be like a voice for all of us,” Flores said.

Since high school, the health administration major, Lynette Travis, has always valued student government. Travis paid attention to each candidate and listened to their future plans as ASI president before casting her vote.

“I think it’s really important to know these are the people who are going to be advocating for me and specifically on campus,” Travis said. “I need to make sure that I feel safe within the people that I talked to, in the groups that [I’m] not voting for, and everything.”

Travis says she voted for Jain and is satisfied with the results of the election, feeling like Jain is a strong candidate for the role.

“They provided really strong things that they wanted to advocate for and I had a really strong interest,” Travis said about the other candidates.

Jain is thankful for the students that voted and believed in her. She will continue her work for students as the new ASI president of CSULB.

Land acknowLedgment

Here at the 49er we acknowledge that the school we report on is located on the sacred site of Puvungna, “the gathering place”. We are on the land of the Tongva/Gabrieleño and the Acjachemen/Juaneño Nations who have lived and continue to live here.

We also acknowledge the Gabrieleño/Tongva (pronounced: GABRIEL-EN-YO/TONG – VAH) and Acjachamen/Juaneño (pronounced: AH-HACH-AH-MEN/JUAN-EN-YO) as the traditional custodians of the Los Angeles region along with the Chumash (pronounced: CHOO-MOSH) to the north and west, and the Tataviam (pronounced: TAH-TAH-VEE-YUM) and Cahuilla (pronounced: KAH-WEE-YAH) Nations to the east.

We respect and value the many ways the Tongva/Acjachemen cultural heritage and beliefs continue to have significance to the living people and remind us about the sacred and spiritual relationship that has always existed here at what we now call California State University Long Beach.

Leila Nunez Multimedia Managing Editor multimedia@daily49er.com

Kristina Agresta Managing Editor managing@daily49er.com

Editors

Hannah Shields News Editor news@daily49er.com

Kadie Gurley Arts & Life Editor arts@daily49er.com

Georgie Smith Opinions Editor opinions@daily49er.com

Matthew Gomez Sports Editor sports@daily49er.com

Gisele Robinett Creative Director design@daily49er.com

Chief Copy Editor

Rosaura Montes

Sam Farfan Special Projects Editor

Photo Editor

Social Media Editor

Sonny Tapia

Maureen Linzaga

Luke Wines Video Editor

Podcast Editor

Public Relations Editor

Community Engagement Editor

Isabel Silagy

Kaitlyn Rowell

Richie Rodriguez

AssistAnts

News Assistants

Jaylen Minnich

Arts Assistants Stacey Chen

Andrea Lopez

Opinions Assistant El Nicklin

Nicholas Broadhead

Sports Assistants

Graphic Design Assistants

Copy Editor Assistants

Photo Assistants

Emmanuel Barrera

Naoki Gima

Jasmine Lee

Luis Castilla

Kimberly Estrada

Renzo Pocasangre

Armando Jacobo

Social Media Assistants Ani Gutierrez

Montse Palmerin

Video Assistants Tatiahna Bentley

Podcast Assistants

Ella McDonald Lei Madrigal

Andy Nguyen

Aiden Swanepoel

BusinEss

Purva Rao Advertising Manager advertising@gobeach.media

Jasmine Lee Creative Director creative@gobeach.media

Leila Nunez Web & Technology Manager web@gobeach.media

Kaitlyn Rowell PR & Promotions Manager

Distribution Manager

PR@gobeach.media

Jesse Kalamian

Jazmin Gallardo distribution@gobeach.media

Jacob Mitchell Distribution Analyst distribution@gobeach.media

AdvisErs

Gary Metzker Design Adviser

Content Adviser

Barbara Kinglsey-Wilson

Jennifer Newton Advertising & Business Adviser

Letters Policy: All letters and emails must bear the phone number of the writer and must be no more than 300 words. The Daily Forty-Niner reserves the right to edit letters for publication in regard to space.

Editorials: All opinions expressed in the columns, letters and cartoons in the issue are those of the writers or artists. The opinons of the Daily Forty-Niner are expressed only in unsigned editorials and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the journalism department or the views of all staff members. All such editorials are written by the editorial board of the Daily Forty-Niner.