The six candidates for Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) president and vice president spoke at a town hall event about their platforms Oct 15.
The Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition, an organization that aims to foster dialogue across the political spectrum, hosted the town hall with the three executive tickets to discuss their platforms ahead of the Oct. 22-24 GUSA elections. Over 30 students attended to hear from the three campaigns, including presidential candidate Darius Wagner (CAS ʼ27) and Nazgol Missaghi (CAS ʼ28), his vice presidential candidate; presidential candidate Saahil Rao (SFS ʼ27) and Zadie Weaver (CAS ʼ28), his vice presidential candidate; and presidential candidate Luke Hughes (SFS ʼ27) and Mikey Williams (SFS ʼ28), his vice presidential candidate.
Rao said preserving Village A is a centerpiece of his campaign, especially amid potential redevelopment plans.
“The reason that Village A is such an important part and such a central part of our platform is because it represents the center of student life on campus,” Rao said at the town hall. “The reason that it’s been such a priority for us here is I was reading through the campus plan and realized that Village A was marked for redevelopment, which we know means being demolished in the same way that Henle was.”
Wagner said his campaign centers on advocating against crackdowns on student social life.
“I’m no stranger to advocating for our students,” Wagner said at the town hall. “I think this is important because we need students to have an avenue to have something outside of their academic spaces, to be able to utilize these spaces and not have a fear of cracking down.”
Hughes said he plans to work with his running mate on downsizing parts of GUSA to ensure its efficiency.
“By speaking with my running mate, Mikey, who has been in GUSA and other people who have been in GUSA for several years now, whether they’re current students or alumni, I learned that GUSA can be much more effective and efficient, particularly by what we call rightsizing GUSA,” Hughes said at the town hall.
“We could make it more effective and efficient by reducing the number of people in the organization,” Hughes added.
Rao said his experience on GUSA’s Financial and Appropriations Committee (FinApp), which allocates funding to student organizations and clubs, highlighted the current limits of student life funding, another element of his campaign.
“Everyone kind of knows that Georgetown’s student life is very underfunded,” Rao said at the town hall. “You can look at FinApp, which Zadie and I have served on — we get about hundred of thousands more in requests every year than we can fill. If you look at our peer universities, all of them have student activity fees much, much higher than ours.”
Weaver said her and Rao’s experience serving on FinApp gives them an important perspective in understanding the funding process.
“Saahil and I are in this unique position where we’re the only people in this race who have ever served on the senate committee that allocates funding to clubs, and this gives us a unique perspective on how this actually works,” Weaver said at the town hall.
Wagner said his experience as a member of the Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP), which supports first-generation and low-income students, influenced his club funding proposal to work with the Center for Student Engagement (CSE).
“I’m a GSPer and as a GSPer, we recognize there are many outstanding costs that come with clubs, whether you’re traveling somewhere or if you need to buy additional equipment,” Wagner said. “And so one of our mechanisms is that we’ll work with both the CSE to establish a fund that sources from different academic departments and also sources from the provost’s office, president’s office, that way we can crowdsource to get some additional funding for a lot of the clubs and organizations that have these additional costs that are impacted.”
Williams said executive funding should be reduced to prioritize student club funding.
“I think that executive funding should be cut,” Williams said at the town hall. “I don’t think it should be taken from clubs. I also think Luke talked about this a lot in our interviews earlier, that GUSA shouldn’t be a means to check clubs — it should be a means for clubs to more enhance their events.”
Executive funding has been a point of contention in past administrations. Under the administration of Ethan Henshaw (CAS ʼ26) and Wagner, at a Feb. 23 senate meeting, the senate passed a bill to allow new executive administrations to start their term with $10,000, an increase from the previously required $7,500.
When asked about the federal government’s recent actions against universities, Rao said GUSA should remain focused on addressing issues on campus.
“GUSA is the only organization chartered to solve problems on behalf of the Georgetown student body, institutional policy problems that the university creates,” Rao said. “And I know there’s this idea that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I really think that GUSA needs people who are spending all of their time focusing on issues that matter on our campus.”
Hughes said GUSA should try to avoid taking positions on national politics and instead focus on campus concerns.
“Right now, we think that GUSA should be careful to not become a political mouthpiece, not comment on everything that’s going on in federal politics,” Hughes said. “We think that there’s many organizations on campus that already participate in political advocacy where students can go to those clubs.”
Missaghi said student activism is particularly important, despite the university’s actions.
“Even though the university stayed quiet, the Trump administration continued cracking down,” Missaghi said at the town hall. “Whenever the university spoke up, the Trump administration continued cracking down. But if this experience has shown us anything, it is that students have power and student voices have power.”
Wagner said GUSA can both address student issues and President Donald Trump’s actions that affect the university community.
“There is a way you can focus on all the student issues, while also advocating for our values off campus,” Wagner said. “What we are seeing is Trump relentlessly attack our university.”
“We’d be very remiss if we don’t use our voices to speak out about this,” Wagner added.