With incumbents comprising just eight of the 26 total students vying for Student Government Association Senate seats, this year’s SGA election brings a wave of new faces eager to join the body.
The number of first-year and newcomer candidates running in this year’s SGA Senate election has increased for a second consecutive year, with 18 fresh candidates running for a senate seat for the first time, up from the 12 last year. More than half of the newcomers are first-year students who currently fill assistant and legislative roles within the body, holding true to a growing trend over the past three years of high first-year involvement in the SGA.
After a lag in candidacies in 2023 — when no senate seats were contested and 27 seats were left vacant after the election — higher participation in elections over the past two years has been primarily driven by first-year students running for the contested races in the undergraduate Columbian College of Arts & Sciences and Elliott School of International Affairs senator races, which have eight and three seats respectively. This year, eight out of the 10 candidates making bids for the eight open CCAS seats are first-year students, and the other two candidates are incumbents.
Michael Ubis, who serves as the chair of the Joint Elections Committee, said first-year students arrive at student government “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” brimming with ideas on how they can improve the student governing body after spending almost a full year on campus.
“I think the SGA just looks like a great place for new students,” Ubis said.
Ubis said the JEC expanded its outreach this year by sending an informational email advertising the availability of positions in the SGA to all students on March 18 — the first day of candidate registration — in hopes of expanding the overall candidate pool.
Despite an increase in overall candidate participation over the past two years, 22 of the 40 available seats are set to remain vacant after this year’s election, a slight increase from the 20 seats predicted to be open before last year’s race. There are no candidates running for the four Milken Institute School of Public Health seats or the two School of Nursing seats. Both schools are currently represented by undergraduate senators who filled the seats midway through the year and are graduating this year.
After low graduate student participation last year, the JEC has verified seven candidates running for graduate seats, an increase from the four candidates who ran last year. All seven graduate students are running in uncontested races in the School of Business, CCAS, the College of Professional Studies and GW Law races.
Ubis said the SGA Senate consistently sees a high turnover of seats in the annual election, as many incumbent senators do not seek reelection because they believe they accomplished everything they “set out to do” when they ran for their initial position. He said this causes some to leave the body entirely after they serve a year.
Sophomore SGA Sen. Jacob Wilner (CCAS-U) said he decided to step down from his seat on the senate because he believes there should be “newer and fresher perspectives” in the body. Wilner said he feels he accomplished his goals as a senator, like co-chairing the Mental Health Assembly.
“Students at GW have specific wants, and my goal was to communicate these wants to create actionable change for a better overall experience,” Wilner said in a message.
Cheydon Naleimaile-Evangelista, a first-year student vying for a CCAS senate seat and current executive assistant to SGA Vice President Ethan Lynne, said he decided to run after noticing a “barrier” between the SGA and the student body, which he hopes to diminish through expanded outreach to students.
He said one of the largest challenges he’s seen this year and anticipates tackling in his first year as a senator are the recent executive orders threatening higher education from President Donald Trump’s administration. He said he hopes to continue advocating for the needs of students throughout the “unpredictable” challenges federal decisions may present.
After spending close to a year in the body and at GW, Naleimaile-Evangelista said he didn’t see himself represented in the SGA as a student of Native Hawaiian and Indigenous descent, and he hopes he can represent other students like himself who are not already represented by current senators.
“Going into a university, the George Washington University, who prides itself on being this diverse university with students from all 50 states and across the country and across the world, I think that that representation needs to be shown in our student government,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.
Sophomore SGA Sen. Joseph Migliorisi (GWSB-U), is running for reelection for one of the business school’s three senate seats. As an incumbent in the race, he said he is running to continue being a voice for GWSB — a community he said often lacks representation in the SGA because of its smaller number of seats in the body than CCAS and the Elliott School.
In his second year as a senator, Migliorisi said he hopes to work on initiatives to ensure a sense of community on campus for all types of students, like expanding support for first-generation college students through creating a “refined” mentorship program, where students can meet with GW alumni.
“It’s very important to make sure that all students, whether they’re first gen or not, whether they’re international students, et cetera, feel included in the life of this university,” Migliorisi said.
Molly St. Clair contributed reporting.
