Presidential Candidates | Photo by Bethany Althauser | The Wright State Guardian
The position of Student Government Association president is a large role with many responsibilities. With SGA elections right around the corner, students must pick the president they feel will best represent their interests.
Presidential candidates
This year, Marwah Almuzoughi and Vivianne Mellon are running for the SGA president position. The two share a lot of similarities in what they want to see changed at Wright State University.
Both women want to become attorneys one day, and they also graduated from the same high school, even having played on the same soccer team.
Almuzoughi is an International Studies major with a concentration on International Diplomacy and Peace Studies. She has been serving as the Head Delegate for Model United Nations for the past year. Additionally, she loves to hang out with her friends and family, finding her relationships to be the most valuable.
“I would like to [better] facilitate more connections between organizations that way, especially diversity organizations,” Almuzoughi said.
Mellon is a double major in Political Science and Crime and Justice Studies with a minor in Legal Studies. This past year, she served as the College of Liberal Arts senator on SGA.
She shared that she loves to do arts and crafts, listen to music and hang out with her friends and her wobbly cat, Cheddar.
“I want to run so that we can get more connected with the student body as a whole because I love SGA so much, and I love Wright State,” Mellon said.
Both candidates shared a lot of personal stories and histories, but they also focused on what they would bring to the position of SGA president.
What their plans are
Both candidates want to improve involvement campus-wide and intend to use their time as SGA president to make this vision come to life. They are each passionate about their platforms, and both have talked extensively about their plans to bridge the gap between students and faculty.
“[Providing] improved communication between students and the representatives, which just allows students to understand what’s going on, you know, when things happen, when things change,” Almuzoughi stated, expanding on other important channels of communication.
Almuzoughi moved to the United States from Libya when she was 13-years-old because her father was an international student at WSU. She explained that WSU used to hold a Cultural Festival in the Nutter Center. She loved this event and hopes to bring it back as SGA president because it was a large part of what made her love WSU.
Mellon shared that when she was a freshman, she would attend events called “Raider Nights in the City,” where the school would offer priced-down tickets to students for events in Dayton, which was what got her involved in SGA and the many other organizations she has been a part of. Mellon plans to bring these back if elected. She shared that she was a shy freshman, and these events helped her grow in her confidence.
Mellon also hopes to re-establish a commuter lounge.
“We are trying to get a commuter lounge 2.0 because we did have a commuter lounge in the Student Union, but it changed to eSports, so commuter students don’t really have a designated spot right now,” Mellon said.
Additionally, each presidential candidate is running alongside a vice presidential candidate that they have chosen.
The partnerships
When students vote for the SGA president, they will also be electing that candidate’s chosen vice president. For Almuzoughi, this is Kareem Khasawneh, and for Mellon, it is Maxwell Bacon.
At the Meet the Candidates event on April 4, the presidential candidates were each asked why they chose their respective VP candidates and gave different but important reasons.
“I wanted someone that was different from me and [to bring] in someone who may not know the SGA constitution and bylaws yet,” Mellon said. “I think it’s important to hear ideas from people who are not just interested in governance. We need to hear from people who have creative minds, like Maxwell.”
Almuzoughi explained her choice of Khasawneh.
“Me and Kareem have been co-presidents for the Muslim Student Association for almost two years now,” Almuzoughi said. “We’ve kind of grown together as leaders [and] learned how to work with each other in various ways.”
The president and vice president must be able to work well together, but it is also important for students to know who their vice president will be, too.
Vice presidential candidates
Khasawneh is a fourth-year Industrial Engineering student who has attended WSU for three years after transferring from Sinclair. He is a co-president of the Muslim Student Association.
Bacon is a third-year Political Science student who transferred to WSU from Clark State. He is the treasurer of Amigos Latinos and a former track runner for WSU.
At the Meet the Candidates event, both VP candidates were asked how they plan to serve students and aid with mental health problems WSU faces.
“Letting people understand that there is a place for them in our environment, giving them a shoulder to lean on and giving them a place where they can feel more heard and welcome. I’d say we have to come at our freshman class primarily and give them more of a community to actually come into and understand that they actually belong in a space like this,” Bacon said.
Khasawneh provided his own response.
“As simple as being an open ear to students to listen to their needs. Mental illness and mental struggles [are] a real thing,” Khasawneh said. “Being a student is not easy, with the amount of pressure that’s on us academically, socially, and everything that comes about with it. I for sure will start by being an open ear listening to what they have to say.”
Voting
Students must vote for the SGA candidates they feel will best represent their desires for the future of WSU. All of the candidates stand on platforms of changes, improvements and communication, but each candidate is still unique.
Voting is open on WINGS from April 6 at 12 p.m. to April 12 at 5 p.m.
