The five candidates vying for the GUSA presidency strived to set their platforms apart at the presidential debate, which focused on funding reform and long-term goals, Monday night.
The candidates’ opening remarks to approximately 50 attendees in the Leavey Program Room highlighted the unique proposals of each ticket but also largely emphasized the limits of what the Georgetown University Student Association can bring to the student body.
GUSA senate Speaker Nate Tisa (SFS ’14) began the debate by pointing out the gap between Georgetown’s ability to attract a variety of students and its capacity to fulfill their needs.
“We run into a problem when it comes to making sure every student has everything they need in order to thrive here, but GUSA has the potential to get students the resources they need,” Tisa said.
Shavonnia Corbin Johnson (SFS ’14) stressed that her active participation in different cultural groups was more important to her candidacy than her two-year involvement in the GUSA senate.
“Unlike some candidates, I don’t consider myself an administrative puppet. I am very much involved and integrated into the student lives,” Corbin Johnson said.
Although all candidates presented extensive proposals in their respective platforms, each were asked to rank the top two items to accomplish if elected.
Spencer Walsh (MSB ’14) said raising school spirit through arranging shuttles to basketball games and ensuring student safety through promoting gendering-neutral housing and the bias reporting system were top priorities. Former Student Activities Commission Chair Jack Appelbaum (COL ’14), whose ticket advocates for extensive funding reform, reiterated the importance of rehauling SAC and increasing student space.
GUSA senator Cannon Warren (SFS ’14), whose ticket has been best known for proposing a rat attack challenge, stressed that the proposal wasn’t the ticket’s sole central platform, emphasizing improving living quality and improving social life as the main goal.
“One thing that most represents us is not going to be the rat attack challenge — it’s going to be lifting the keg ban and supporting socializing on campus. One thing I really want to do is to get students to be able to drink on the front lawn, because they would be legitimizing something that we already do,” Warren said.
Warren voiced support for providing sufficient funding to groups operated through Campus Ministry but continued to set his responses apart from others when he answered how his platform reflects GUSA’s role in representing Georgetown’s Jesuit values.
“I will definitely try to promote Georgetown to lose its Catholic identity. I think we can just go ahead and show them how to be Catholic in the 21st century,” Warren said.
When asked about the best form of relationship between the GUSA senate and executive, candidates largely agreed that more collaboration and communication were needed but differed on the means of achieving those goals.
Appelbaum said he often observed duplications of senate and executive initiatives and proposed more definitive roles of the two branches.
“The senate should take on the bigger issues, the more aggressive issues, and then the executive can work to implement those,” Appelbaum said.
Tisa, however, pointed out that the lack of transparency in the executive blocks effective collaboration.
“[On] the executive, a lot of things happen behind the scenes and you don’t really know what they are. In GUSA, the executive should be coming to the senate a lot more and communicate what they are doing,” Tisa said.
The candidates, while all invariably saying they would welcome all other tickets to their cabinets if elected, provided similar choices to who they believe is the second-best candidate in the field. Walsh and Tisa selected each other as the second best choice, while Appelbaum and Corbin Johnson named each other. After initially naming Chicken Madness as the write-in second best candidate, Warren eventually settled on Corbin Johnson and Appelbaum.
Candidates made funding reform a focus of the debate, although the most effective approach and its level of importance were points of contention.
Appelbaum proposed eliminating SAC and consolidating the funding process under one student organization board, where student groups elect representatives to the board and compete for funding separately without an equal percentage cut for all budgets regardless of the sizes of events and groups.
Tisa, whose platform proposes breaking down groups under SAC into more specialized funding boards after the models of other individual advisory boards, called Appelbaum’s proposal too overreaching and concerning.
“You’re trying to apply a SAC solution to a SAC problem here but bringing to a student-body level,” Tisa said, “I don’t think that the funding is the problem. I don’t think that it warrants GUSA’s entire year. I think that would take away [attention] from the problems that do affect student life.”
Walsh, who is part of the only ticket without any GUSA experience, worked to dispel possible reservations to his experience in effectively communicating with university administrators.
“It’s not important to lobby to the university from a GUSA perspective. It’s important to lobby to the university with a student perspective. It doesn’t take a GUSA insider to rally students,” Walsh said.
Appelbaum, however, disagreed and pointed out having experience in working with the administrators allows him to better comprehend their concerns and facilitate swifter cooperation.
“More important to the inside experience is how to work with the administrators, knowing that in order to get something accomplished, you have to pace it in a way that is advantageous to that administrator. You have to know what their priorities are,” Appelbaum said.

As the debate drew to a close, candidates were asked to envision GUSA’s long-term goals, with many of them citing student outreach as top priorities.

Corbin Johnson said she would remobilize and reconnect with students, while Appelbaum emphasized student decision-making.

“The long-term vision of GUSA is making sure students are the ones making decisions on campus. Far too often the administrators make decisions on their own and come to students and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing — what do you think of this,’ or, ‘I’m sorry, we forgot to invite you to this meeting and forgot to make you a part of this discussion.’ That’s unacceptable,” Appelbaum said.

In his closing statement, Warren distinguished his platform by emphasizing that its budget of $31,145 is the smallest of all tickets.

“We have the smallest budget, and we really believe smaller is better, not just in terms of GUSA but in the say the administrators have what students can do. We want to be advocates for student rights and students’ quality of life,” he said.