A junior and former SA senator is the first to announce her candidacy for Student Association president Tuesday.
Christina Giordano is running on a platform that includes reducing small expenditures for students and increasing opportunities for students to sign up to meet alumni one-on-one. She said that while she studied in Paris last semester, she met with an alumna who works at a bank there and the experience made her believe alumni should be more accessible to students year-round.
Giordano said she has spoken to officials in the Office of Alumni Relations about increasing opportunities for current students to meet alumni, who she called “an incredibly underutilized resource.” She plans to make the career adviser network more user-friendly and to facilitate meet-ups using Google Doc forms so students can meet local alumni working in their chosen fields.
The international business major said she has already met with officials about her initiatives, including rerouting the Colonial Express shuttle bus – which transports students from the center of campus to residences on the edge of campus like Thurston Hall and The Aston – to Safeway, which she says is more affordable than Whole Foods. She said she would encourage local restaurants that accept GWorld to create more deals for students.
“Even though we have fixed tuition, the cost of living isn’t fixed, and that’s hard for a lot of students,” Giordano said. “I think that everybody can agree that GW offers a great experience from learning in the classroom to internships. But everyone knows that GW’s expensive, so I think that this is something that could be applicable to all students.”
Former Executive Vice President Casey Syron hoped to reduce costs by implementing a swipe system for on-campus dining where students are charged one price instead of paying for their food by weight. Before he resigned last month, he announced officials were in talks with WMATA to start a discounted Metro program for incoming students.
Giordano said while she doesn’t want to make major changes to GW’s Mental Health Services offerings, she would like to make small changes like introducing more substance-free housing options for students. Confidentiality at MHS was a key component of SA President Andie Dowd’s campaign last year.
She added that she wants to ensure that the University’s fall break, which will be implemented for the first time in October, continues after next fall. Calendars for academic years after 2017 have not been made yet, and students were part of the calendar committee for the first time last year.
As a member of the SA Senate her sophomore year, Giordano sponsored the referendum that supportedmandatory training about sexual violence and consent at Colonial Inauguration and throughout the first weeks of the fall semester. That referendum favored support from 92 percent of students who voted in last year’s elections.
A member of Alpha Delta Pi, campus tour guide and first-year developmental program mentor in the business school, Giordano said she would communicate with students and officials to help reach her goals.
“I like reaching out to people, and I think that it’s important that when you’re SA President, you have relationships with students and administrators,” she said. “I just think that, no matter what our platform is or what our initiatives are, we all want to have the same goal of making the University a great place.”
