As they prepare to end their student government tenures, outgoing Student Government Association President Ethan Lynne and SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard said the body’s relationships with officials and students has transformed since they joined it as first years.
Lynne, who rose through the SGA as a senator, finance committee chair and vice president before winning the presidency last April, and Stoddard, who ascended from first-year legislative assistant to pro tempore and vice president, said they’re most proud of securing the largest increase to student organization funding in the SGA’s history and building closer relationships with University officials during their terms. Both leaders said, despite falling short on some of their campaign promises, like removing University Yard’s fences, adding expanded dining options and having the University conduct a third-party free speech audit, their increased relationships with GW’s leadership taught them how to identify and achieve feasible goals by working with the right officials.
Lynne said he hopes the community will remember him as a “relationship builder” who rebuilt the SGA’s credibility with students and officials over his years in the body, after previous presidents had tarnished the body’s legacy at the University. He said when he arrived at GW, the SGA was making headlines over an internal coup attempt, and the community widely viewed the SGA as a “joke,” a reputation he said he has made strides rebuilding over his two years in SGA leadership.
He said as president, he continued to build foster relationships with officials from his vice presidential term, including holding monthly meetings with top officials like University President Ellen Granberg, the provost, Dean of Students Colette Coleman and other housing and dining officials.
“Hopefully three or four years from now, whoever the SGA president is has so many meetings they don’t even know what to do with,” Lynne said. “Because they have built up so far and connections and relationships with admin that students really are everywhere.”
Lynne recalled knowing the exact official to email to turn off outdoor heaters in Kogan Plaza within an hour when the weather suddenly turned warm one day in the fall — a process he said might have taken weeks when he first joined the SGA.
“I feel like I’m probably the best-equipped student at the entire University to actually be able to get something done,” Lynne said. “It has taken me the full four years to learn the very complicated bureaucracy here and all the internal politics that comes with it.”
Lynne said despite his administration falling short on some of its original campaign goals, like having the University conduct a third-party audit of free speech on campus and creating a 24-hour dining option on campus, he is excited to pass on his understanding of GW’s “complicated bureaucracy,” built through his tenure as vice president and president and concurrent role as a student employee in admissions, to incoming SGA president MJ Childs, which he said helped him advocate for students in seemingly small ways.
Lynne said he is most proud of securing an over $1 million annual increase to student organization funding through working with the Board of Trustees since his sophomore year as finance committee chair to implement a $50 fee on full-time undergraduates to raise additional funds starting this academic year because of the labor and high number of people the initiative required. Stoddard said at a meeting at the end of last semester the SGA would have a similar amount of general allocations for student organizations, $279,500 this semester, but increased co-sponsorship funds — additional money groups can request throughout the year — for a total of over $600,000 in student organization funding this semester.
Lynne said he wasn’t able to accomplish some goals because of sweeping University budget cuts and federal pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, which he said put GW in a difficult position to roll out new initiatives this year.
Lynne said he believed the University lacked resources to fund the free speech audit, but the simultaneous Code of Student Conduct revisions this year served as a partial substitute since officials reexamined the University’s free speech protections. Some students, including the SGA’s conduct advocacy office, and Faculty Senators remain critical of the proposed changes set to go into effect next academic year, but Lynne said it’s up to students to determine whether their dissatisfaction is strong enough to advocate for further revisions.
“Administration really ‘reality set’ us very early in the year, in terms of, ‘Look, all this stuff is happening, so it might be wise for you to prioritize free or reduced cost initiatives or things that would save the University money,’” Lynne said.
Lynne said he chose to “reallocate” some of his advocacy efforts like removing the permanent fences surrounding U-Yard, one of his original platform promises, to smaller improvements, like the addition of benches and hammocks in U-Yard after he realized he would not be able to remove the fences when officials couldn’t provide a clear explanation for why they remained early in the year.
“If I was going to keep hitting a wall, then it’s time to go to another place,” Lynne said.
Lynne said he hopes his accomplishments, like reestablishing a student council to advise the Student Health Center and creating a student advocacy office to help students navigate the conduct process, will last long after he leaves GW. Lynne said he has been setting up meetings between outgoing and incoming SGA members and ensured offices like SAO are selecting directors for the following year.
Stoddard, who ran for president this spring and lost to SGA President-elect MJ Childs, said she expanded the role of the vice presidency beyond its traditional focus of ensuring bills go through committees, senators attend meetings and staff write their reports into an advocacy position, which she believes is now a permanent feature of the job. She said the shift to advocacy continued the work of her predecessors like former SGA Vice President Demetrius Apostolis, who campaigned on promises like increasing dining options.
Stoddard said accomplishments she’s made this year, like successfully advocating for women’s inclusive gym hours, late night dining options and ensuring students’ access to the finals exam schedule at the start of the semester are indicative of the vice president’s advocacy working.
“You’re also in the room with the administrators, so you need to have an advocacy requirement,” Stoddard said. “Does it make it harder? Yes. But if it’s not harder, you’re not doing it right.”
Stoddard said she has spent much of this year pushing back on the “corporate B.S.” administrators “spew” by communicating to officials about student-raised issues in an “unfiltered” and “honest” manner, sometimes at the expense of her own popularity among administrators to push them for solutions.
“I like helping people get the best of what they can get,” Stoddard said. “It’s really difficult when I think student leaders prioritize their own likability.”
Stoddard, like Lynne, said she was unable to achieve some elements of her platform, like a “training table” that would have provided food for athletes early in the morning, due to University-wide budget constraints. She said she made some progress on other ideas, like Blackboard standardization and allowing students to view aggregated course feedback, but those policies were more complicated to implement because they required consulting bodies like the Faculty Senate and obtaining approval through multiple University channels.
Stoddard said she does not plan to let losing the presidential race define how she looks back on her three years in the SGA. She said she hopes her successors, Childs and SGA Vice President-elect Aicha Sy, streamline the long procedures students currently go through if they want to meet with administration to express opinions through advocacy and effectively serving as a voice for students.
“Does it make me sad to close this chapter of my life that I spent three years in? Yeah, it does,” Stoddard said. “But I still have so many friends that I’m going to keep, so many things that I care about, so many things that I got done that I’m proud of, and I’m still going to want to give back.”
