Emily-Anne Santiago, the president of GW College Democrats, announced her candidacy for Student Government Association president Friday.

Santiago, a junior studying political science and accounting, said if elected she will expand the grocery stores that accept GWorld card payment, bring back tuition lock — a policy that prevents universities from raising tuition fees for a specific period — and open housing registration earlier in the year. An outsider to the body, Santiago said her experience leading the largest student organization on campus, GW College Democrats, and two years spent working in GW’s Campus Living and Residential Education as a community engagement advisor has prepared her to efficiently communicate with students and address their needs.

Santiago said at the beginning of this school year she could not have imagined running for SGA president, but when she saw the applicant pool and the lack of female presidential candidates, she wanted to run to provide female Latina representation.

“I decided that I wanted to be the voice,” Santiago said. “I’m going to be graduating next year, I’m a junior and next year will be my senior year, and I don’t want to just graduate GW, I want to leave it better than I found it. And I think a big part of that is being represented.”

Santiago said she also wants to make it easier for students with dietary restrictions to opt out of GW’s dining plan. She said she has faced difficulties obtaining an exemption from the meal plan from GW, and it wasn’t until she had a severe allergic reaction that the University permitted her to opt out.

“That shouldn’t be happening on campus, we should have more flexibility in listening to students that when they say, ‘I don’t feel safe in this food,’ they can be exempted,” Santiago said.

She said she would work with dining to expand the number of grocery stores that accept GWorld dining dollars to include locations like Whole Foods, Trader Joes and H Mart. Students can currently use GWorld at the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave in Georgetown.

Santiago said she would like to “streamline” the Disability Support Services application into a single portal so professors can access all of a students’ accommodations in one location. She said the current process requires students to email and meet with each of their professors at the start of the semester, which can make students feel embarrassed and abandoned by their University.

“It makes it easier for professors even, because when they’re trying to find which of their students have a DSS letter, they can just look at a portal instead of having to scroll in their email and see which of their 200 students have these letters, because then what happens is accommodations get lost,” Santiago said.

She said she would advocate for a commitment from GW to match the Pell Grant — a federal grant largely funded by the U.S. Department of Education for low-income students — for all student recipients in the event that the scholarship is defunded by the Trump administration. With Trump’s recent executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, funding for the Pell Grant is facing significant budget cuts.

“I would advocate for that commitment by GW, that if the Pell Grant were to go, that the University would match it so low-income students don’t have to fear having to find a new university at the last-minute drop of the hat,” Santiago said.

If elected, Santiago said she would create an “advisory board” of graduate students she would meet with once a month to hear concerns from GW Law School and medical students who do not have the time to commit to a full SGA senator position.

Graduate student participation in the SGA has been low in previous election cycles, with only four graduate students running for senate seats last year.

“Just because they’re busy does not mean that they don’t deserve a voice,” Santiago said. “They make up more population of students than undergrad, they deserve an equal voice in the SGA, and they currently don’t have that.”

Santiago has collected the needed 379 signatures and will appear on the official ballot for the April 10 to 11 SGA election following Joint Elections Committee certification. The signature collection period will close Tuesday at 5 p.m. when all candidates must submit their petitions to the JEC for certification.