The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate passed two resolutions at its March 17 meeting, one to ease budget approval and the other to address concerns over appointed GUSA officials holding two positions within the student government. 

The budget resolution reduces the threshold for the GUSA Senate to pass its budget, from two-thirds of senators to a simple majority, while the bill related to GUSA officials would prohibit unelected GUSA appointees from holding two offices at once. Although GUSA President Jaden Cobb (CAS ’25) vetoed both pieces of legislation, the Senate overrode his veto to pass both bills. 

While Cobb expressed support for the budget amendment, he expressed concerns regarding the GUSA official’s resolution, as it would force Pratik Jacob (CAS ’25), who currently serves both as Cobb’s chief of staff and as an election commissioner, a position that is appointed by the President and confirmed by the senate to run elections every November and April, to step down. 

Senator John DiPierri (SFS ’25), who introduced the resolution, said he proposed the resolution to address potential bias.

“The reason that this was passed in the first place is that there were concerns about concurrent positions and potential biases,” DiPierri said at the meeting.

Cobb spoke during the debate on the resolution, saying he vetoed the resolution to create more dialogue about the current issues with prohibiting concurrent positions. 

“I hate to veto things; I do it as a last resort,” Cobb said at the meeting.“Think of it as ‘It needs to come back to you guys and let’s talk about it.’ Let’s not rush it.” 

Cobb added that he supports the resolution, but that the current election commission would not be able to run its upcoming elections in April successfully without Jacob, who is the only serving election commissioner with experience running GUSA elections.

“I do think that people should not be concurrent at the same time because obviously conflicts of interest arise,” Cobb said. “However, we are in a unique predicament this year where the whole election commission is new people who have not been trained and have had one meeting so far, and the only person who knows how to actually run is Pratik.” 

Sahil Sud (SFS ’27) questioned the purpose of the bill, asking for clarifications on how a conflict of interest could occur in the future.

“I don’t think there’s any evidence previously that the election commission has used that conflict of interest in any issue,” Sud said at the meeting. “I don’t see how the conflict of interest could manifest in the future.” 

DiPierri said the potential for bias and interference in elections could lead to problems with students’ perception of GUSA and information leaking.

“There was the concern of potential bias, not necessarily now, but also in the future,” DiPierri said. “There were no specific instances, it was just a general thought of concern that someone who is working in the executive could monitor elections.” 

“It’s the optical problems and hypotheticals that arise should members of the executive also be members of the election commission,” DiPierri added.

Referencing the senate’s decision not to certify Cobb’s own election in October, Cobb said allowing Jacob to stay on the election commission would prevent future issues with elections. 

“This was our most controversial election in GUSA history,” Cobb said. “So what I propose is, and we talked about it in GUSA leadership, that Pratik stays over and helps the new people, walk them through, let them know how to run the election, and then hopefully by November, they can run them themselves.” 

The senate eventually amended the resolution to end concurrent positions for executive staff so that it would take effect June 1, allowing Jacob to lead the election commission in April. Both that resolution and the budget resolution passed unanimously. 

After confirming Samuel Lovell (CAS ’25) as a new senator in February, the senate also confirmed two additional new senators, Robert Della Bernarda (CAS ’25) and Olivia Mason (CAS ’26) to an at-large seat, filling vacancies after former senators Emily Bertanzetti (CAS ’25), Saatvik Sunkavalli (SFS ’25) and Nina Tanaka (MSB ’25) resigned from their seats.