Updated March 23, at 2:38 p.m.
First-year Zain Masood launched his campaign for Student Government Association president Thursday, aiming to lower tuition and advocate for officials to sell the Mount Vernon Campus.
Masood, an international affairs major with a concentration in security policy from Miami, said if elected president he would make “bold moves” in the role by advocating for officials to lower tuition, sell the Vern and switch to local providers for higher quality food in dining halls. Masood said although he’s a first-year with no previous SGA experience, he is just as qualified for the role as sophomores and juniors, since he has already experienced GW for a full year and has previous organizing experience on political campaigns in Florida.
Masood said since students pay tuition and are the University’s main source of revenue, they have the most power and potential to make change at the University. When asked how he would accomplish his broad goals as SGA president, including selling the Vern and convincing officials to lower tuition, Masood repeatedly said he would work to build student pressure on the administration to meet students’ demands, though did not specify what a specific pressure campaign would look like.
“We just need to be active,” Masood said. “We need to be active members of our campus community, we need to show our voice and we need to unify together.”
Masood said his top priority as president would be lowering undergraduate tuition, which officials raised to $69,780 last year and have hiked every year since 2019. He said he would work to pressure administrators, like University President Ellen Granberg and the Board of Trustees, by “uniting students” to demand they make changes.
“We have the upper hand in any negotiation,” Masood said. “Us students must realize that we always have the upper hand.”
Masood said students are most directly affected by cuts to campus services, like reduced library hours and the halved frequency of Mount Vernon Express shuttles, and should be more involved in the decision-making process with University officials when they decide where to make cuts.
Masood said he is co-president of GW’s chapter of the Collegiate Institute for Middle East Affairs — a national organization that works to advance students’ understanding of the Middle East. The GW chapter, an unaffiliated student organization formed earlier this year, has been unable to gain official status due to the University’s pause on forming new organizations this academic year.
Masood said the current SGA has made some positive changes, like advocating for officials to reopen Gelman Library 24/7 and release final exam schedules on the first day of classes, but the initiatives are all “very small” compared to the broad changes he wants to see on campus, like lowering tuition.
“We shouldn’t go up to the administration and just keep begging for these small little changes and have to fight tooth and nail for them,” Masood said.
Masood said officials’ recent sale of the Virginia Science and Technology Campus for $427 million was a “good move,” and as president he would advocate for officials to further consolidate the University’s assets onto Foggy Bottom, including selling the Vern. He said selling the Vern could also help officials cut costs as they face budget pressure because they could eliminate services like Vex shuttles between campuses and paying staff on the Vern.
“I don’t like the fact that we have two different campuses, one here on Foggy, one on the Vern,” Masood said. “It doesn’t promote a good student culture if we have half the students on one campus and half the students on the other.”
About 700 students live on the Vern, according to the Division for Student Affairs, a little over 6 percent of the undergraduate student population, according to enrollment data.
Masood said his other priorities include advocating for a switch away from Chartwells Higher Education — GW’s dining provider, which operates its dining halls and on-campus restaurants — and instead encouraging officials to partner with local Foggy Bottom restaurants and suppliers to increase food quality and student satisfaction. Students have long reported dissatisfaction with GW’s dining halls since Chartwells became the University’s dining partner in 2021, reporting low food quality and incidents of foodborne illness.
Masood said officials should replace the options with local D.C. restaurants that would hire staff to operate them. Chartwells currently oversees all aspects of GW Dining, including staff recruitment and management.
Some universities, like the University of Massachusetts Amherst, partner with local suppliers and vendors to bring fresh ingredients into their dining halls — consistently earning the college the top spot on college food rankings. Associate Vice President of Business Services Seth Weinshel said at a November SGA meeting that Chartwells does a “great job” sourcing local ingredients, and officials aim to raise more awareness about the company’s local sourcing.
Masood said SGA leaders also need to increase communication with the student body. He said he applied to fill a vacancy in the SGA Senate in February and gave a statement before the Governance and Nominations Committee, but never heard back about whether he was accepted or denied as a candidate.
Senators at the committee’s Feb. 16 meeting voted not to advance Masood’s nomination.
SGA Senate Pro Tempore José Dalmau, the chair of the nominations committee, said he informed Masood of his rejection in February over email at an address Masood previously used to communicate with SGA members.
“What kind of SGA administration is this where somebody who wants to join your organization, you’re not even emailing them back,” Masood said. “Like, how are they going to get big changes done?”
The SGA candidate registration opened Thursday and will remain open until 5 p.m. on March 25. Masood must collect at least 359 student signatures before he will officially be on the ballot for the April 16-17 elections, pending Joint Elections Commission verification of his signatures.
This piece was updated to include comment from SGA Senate Pro Tempore José Dalmau.
