The results are in: Fernando Villatoro ’22 will serve as SGA president for the 2021-2022 school year, with Andy Kenley ’22 as Vice President of Student Affairs (VPSA) and Ashton Aveling ’22 as Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA). Loyal Terry ’22 and Makaela Burch ’22 were the runners-up in the VPSA and VPAA races (Villatoro ran unopposed).
As president, Villatoro plans to continue the work he started as VPAA, the role he currently holds, in improving Grinnell College’s conduct process and creating a new SGA website. But he also wants to take up two tasks started by current SGA members: splitting up the Diversity and Outreach Coordinator role into two new positions in order to make it more realistic for the position holders to perform all the duties of the role and rewriting and implementing a new constitution.
Overall, he said, he wants to make SGA more accessible and useful for the students it represents.
“We need to have a cohesive SGA in order to actually address the issues that the student body are experiencing,” he said.
The yearly SGA election, which allows students to vote on the president, VPSA and VPAA roles, as well as their representing senators, opened on Feb. 19 and closed at midnight the next day, with a one-day grievance period afterward.
Twelve senators were elected, three for each class (a COVID-19-era modification to the Senate system, which is usually based on housing clusters): Ahon Gooptu, Nicolo Mendez Subieta and Marnie Monogue for ’21, Lex Baumann, Makaela Burch and Keven Hernandez for ’22 (Burch also ran for VPAA against Aveling), Nameera Muhammad Dawood, Zoe Gonzalez and Paddy Haley for ’23, and Tess McCain, Anthony Kang and Eli Eichner for ’24.
All other members of the SGA cabinet will be appointed by the president and vice-presidents.
