On Thursday morning, the 2019 Student Government Association (SGA) election results were released via email to the Grinnell student body. Voting lasted from 12 p.m. on Feb. 3 to 12 p.m. on Feb. 5, with a short grievance period following. Regina Logan ’20 won the presidency with 727 votes against 66 votes of no confidence; Logan ran unopposed. Gracee Wallach ’20 will take the role of vice president of academic affairs (VPAA), having received 422 votes to the 352 of her opponent, Max Hill ’20. Saketan Anand ’21 will be the new vice president of student affairs (VPSA), with 397 votes to Quinn Ercolani ’20’s 394.
In her platform, Logan outlined a six-point plan for her presidency, which she published on her campaign’s Facebook page. The plan consists of publicizing college resources, improving student representation, fighting for students’ money through improving management of both student fees and campus wages, prioritizing safety and inclusion, reviewing SGA policies and fulfilling Grinnell’s social justice mission.
Logan said, “I wanted to run for president because I really believe in students’ ability to govern themselves. … I firmly believe that Grinnell [College]’s campus is a better place when there are students making autonomous decisions, and I think that student government can be a vehicle for us to realize that. I think that as president, that can be a role where I empower other students to find those decision-making positions, and to continue to push administrators at this school to get them to see why it’s beneficial for students to be decision-makers.”
A central point of Logan’s platform is to make SGA more transparent and accessible to all students and to make students more aware of the resources that are available to them. Going along with one of the six prongs of Logan’s plan for office, publicizing college resources, she wants to make sure that students know about opportunities like the textbook lending library.
Wallach said that she was especially excited to be able to make changes in academics at the College, which she said is ultimately why students attend.
“The position of academic affairs is really what got me excited about this because I think that I and a lot of other students have issues with how the College functions academically, but those sometimes get a lot less airtime than student-affairs issues,” she said.
Wallach’s platform had five main points: enforcing administrative accountability, increasing institutional accessibility, amplifying student voices and needs, decolonizing curriculum and ensuring course consistency.
She said, “I really feel like emphasizing decolonizing curriculum was something I was really excited about. Specifically, I’m on the sociology student educational policy committee and I’d say that’s my biggest academic administrative experience at Grinnell. … I want to work toward empowering SEPCs to learn more about what they do, increasing their ability to have a voice in a lot of different processes, and then working to have a syllabus review process, where SEPCs look at the syllabi for all the courses in their major each semester.”
Wallach said part of the review will involve looking at course curricula to see where a greater diversity of readings and assignments could be introduced.
Anand said that although he has not been a member of SGA in the past, he has plenty of first-hand organizational experience in student life at the College.
“… I was a Freesound manager last semester, and I’ve been part of TinyDorm for over a year now.” Anand was inspired to run after attending several student senate meetings last semester and seeing the kinds of policies and issues they discussed.
One of Anand’s project’s while in office will be to work on reopening Bob’s Underground Café, located in the basement of Main Hall. The plan would begin by figuring out a way to have the space open more often throughout the week and hopefully working toward a way to fully reopen it as a dining facility.
“Maybe for next semester, we’re in the process of putting management together, putting together a plan, looking at how we can purchase stuff and stock the place to maybe get it going like the Grill.”
Anand also listed increasing transparency between SGA and the student body as a major goal for his term asVPSA.
“I think SGA isn’t very transparent itself, so I really want to work on being more transparent and accountable.”
Anand beat his opponent, Quinn Ercolani, by just three votes.
