The two candidates for student body president and two candidates for vice president of finance answered student questions at Elon’s Student Government Association executive candidate forum Wednesday night in The Oak House.
Juniors Britt Mobley and Curran Gilster are vying for student body president and answered questions about their backgrounds, goals and issues on campus. Mobley currently serves as a school of education senator and Gilster is a College of Arts and Sciences senator.
If elected student body president, Mobley said one issue he plans on addressing is the relationship between SGA and greek organizations on campus.
“I think folks within the greek life sector believe that they're always kind of pushed away or pushed to the outskirts a little bit,” Mobley said. “There's a lot of utilization between student government and greek life because we can get students and get to the most of the student body that way.”
For Gilster, one issue he plans on addressing is the relationship between Elon University students and the surrounding community. Gilster pointed to LabCorp, Cone Health and Glen Raven as companies headquartered locally that Elon students could potentially work with more often.
“We're not utilizing our backyard very well,” Gilster said. “By working with administrators, we can help establish a pipeline for Elon talent to go to those businesses, so kids can intern at those companies while also continuing their studies down here.”
Juniors Gabriella Gutiérrez and Ryan Lockwood are running for vice president of finance.
The vice president of finance runs SGA’s finance board, which is responsible for allocating the $436,000 budget collected from student activity fees to organizations across campus. Gutiérrez said because many students don’t know that they can request money from SGA, if elected, one of her main focuses will be outreach.
“If elected as vice president of finance, I want to be more involved in the student organizations and informing them of the opportunities finance board can give them and the funds they have available to them,” Gutiérrez said.
Lockwood said something he would focus on as vice president of finance is increasing student involvement on campus overall.
“There’s an extremely low percentage of people involved in other things outside of greek life, and so that’s something that I would really like to improve if elected to this position,” Lockwood said.
Voting for SGA elections open March 27 at 8 a.m. and close March 28 at 5 p.m. Including the four executive candidates, 33 students are running for positions. Students can vote on PhoenixCONNECT.