Spread: Meet Your Candidates

The Signal had the opportunity to sit down with Zayvion and discuss his bid for President of SGA:

Where are you from?

“I am from Newton County, Georgia. I was born in Rockdale, and raised in Covington so I’m a full-blown Georgia Peach.

What are you majoring in and why are you majoring in it? Did that influence your decision to run for SGA president?

I am a criminal justice major. I am majoring in it because I want to work in the legal field as a prosecutor to help reform our criminal justice system. I think my underlying passion for change was what fueled me to run for SGA President. We really do need a lot of changes.

What are the biggest issues facing students at Georgia State and how do you plan on addressing those issues?

“I think the biggest issue is representation. That’s for all our campuses and when it comes to the Perimeter campuses, they are very underrepresented in Student Government. I think that we need to fundamentally change the makeup of Student Government to be a better representation of the students that we are supposed to serve. I am happy to work with the incoming government to change the constitution and the bylaws to make our system more of a representative body of the people that we want to serve.”

What kind of changes do you think would allow for better representation of perimeter campus students?

My biggest initiative is changing the way that our legislature is set up. Currently, we have the University-Wide Senate. Atlanta campus has 36 seats, and Perimeter only has 10. I want to make a bicameral legislature with the House of Representatives where, just by numbers, Atlanta would still have a proportional supermajority but counteracting that majority is the University Senate having a set amount of representatives, giving perimeter colleges a majority in that body. I think that would be a great step forward to keep collaboration and build bridges between them.

How do you feel about running uncontested?

“Considering our record low levels of student engagement; How do you plan on getting more students involved in their campus?”

“A lot of our students think of Georgia State University as a commuter school. Come here, get your degree, and go back home. That shouldn’t be happening. We are in the heart of Atlanta, at the entertainment capital of the South. I think we should use our position in the city and use our own ingenuity to keep students engaged here on campus. I want to start doing fun traditions like I want to have an SGA flag football game where you could have the opportunity to tackle your president, who wouldn’t want to come and tackle the president?

Why are you the person most qualified to represent students at GSU?

I think my being a freshman is an asset. I think having a fresh set of eyes to be able to look at this problem without the biases of “past experience” allows me to come at this from a very different angle. I also think that by being a freshman liaison, communicating with freshmen, which are a large part of our student population, and understanding what the needs of the folks are. My current chairmanship of the student services committee, and the work that my committee has done make me qualified. We’ve expanded access to condoms to be available in the SGA office. We are working around the clock trying to ensure students know what services our university provides. I think that in my short time here, I’ve proven that I can do the job.

I am sad. I feel as though we need a lot more involvement in SGA as a whole. I don’t like that there are vacancies and that a lot of our races are uncontested. I think that we as an organization need to do a lot of self-evaluation and see what we’re doing wrong because obviously, we’re doing something wrong. No one should be happy that a president is running uncontested, that our EVPs are running uncontested and a lot of our seats are vacant. We should want a full ballot and our students deserve to have a full ballot of options.

How do you plan to communicate with students to hear their needs and interests?

The two biggest ways are gonna be social media and face-to-face. I went to the Clarkston campus today just to put my face in front of students so that they could get to know who I am, what I’m running for, and what I think we should be doing. I think we need a lot more of that, a lot more face-to-face interaction with students. I think that we are missing that personable aspect of student government and I hope that I can bring that aspect to this organization.

What obstacles do you see getting in the way during your presidency?

I think the main obstacle that I will have is the preconceived notion that students have about SGA and trying to convince them that we are creating a new organization that is doing something different. We’re saying goodbye to the old ways and saying hello to the new ways. Convincing students after years of previous leadership, which has given them nothing, that this is our time to get things done is the biggest obstacle I see.

College of Arts and Sciences:

(from left to right) Nathan Brown, Allanis Ellis, Sa’Real McRae, Casey Purser

College of Arts

(from left to right) Delisa Hardnick, Carter Riddett, Taylor Simmons

Senators

Robinson College of Business: Pictured: Eriore Adeoluwa