As the end of the spring semester approaches, Seton Hall’s Student Government Association (SGA) has kicked off the process of electing new representatives to advocate for the student body.
From April 23 to April 24, students can vote in SGA’s spring elections on Engage. Alternatively, in-person polling will be held at the University Center.
Current SGA president Kai Hansen, who has been in the organization for three years, explained the different positions that comprise SGA. He started off by explaining that senators are the representatives who primarily constitute SGA; they represent each class and each school at SHU to express either school or year-specific issues.
“Senator’s responsibilities [are to] show up to meetings,” Hansen said. “We have meetings every Monday at 7 p.m., and you serve on a committee.”
According to Hansen, there are six committees: clubs, finance, student life, village relations, public relations, and academic affairs. Every committee has a head chair elected from the body of senators through internal elections. However, a few of these committees already have head chairs from the executive board.
Beyond these senators and committees, there is the e-board assembled by the treasurer, secretary, vice president, and president.
“The treasurer oversees the finance committee and also makes the budget…the secretary oversees the club organizations committee, so he does all sorts of data gathering,” Hansen said. “The vice president is in charge of elections, our environmental protection standing committee, and our gender equity committee.”
Before campaigning began for the upcoming elections, faculty advisor Winston Roberts, assistant vice president of Student Services and dean of Student Engagement, said he has high hopes for the future of SGA.
“SGA has been very active recently, and I hope that momentum continues,” Roberts said. “I look forward to SGA further strengthening relationships with fellow students and the South Orange community.”
This year’s elections are different from the past: After two years of Hansen’s unopposed presidency, SHU has two presidential candidates with two unique e-board tickets.
The two presidential candidates are junior finance and technology major Jackson Vaughn, current executive treasurer and a second-year SGA member, and junior psychology major Richard Picone, village relations committee chair and first-year SGA member.
Jackson Vaughn
Vaughn says his vision for the presidency boils down to the “two reasons” people come to college.
“They come to college to get a job, and they come to college to make friends,” Vaughn said.
His focus on increasing the percentage of students with jobs after college is centered on new Career Center innovations.
“My main tangible initiative is to reform the Career Center on this campus, and it’s something that’s already on the radar of administration,” Vaughn said.
However, these innovations are not limited to securing jobs post-grad, as he said he hopes they will also help with acquiring internships. Vaughn said he has looked at all the different schools and observed their best initiatives.
He said he hopes to replicate these programs throughout all of SHU.
“I’m a business student, and the business school has a really good relationship with an alternative investment fund in the area,” Vaughn said. “As a result of this relationship, employees of the company come into the Stillman [School of Business] every year, and they recruit Stillman students. I want to take that pipeline model and replicate it not only within Stillman but also in other colleges on this campus, too.”
Stillman isn’t the only school with a direct program, though; the School of Diplomacy and International Relations and the College of Human Development, Culture and Media (CHDCM) notably have their own programs.
“I think another model that we can benefit from is the diplo school’s,” Vaughn said. “I’m seeing diplo kids post-grad like, ‘Oh I’m going to D.C. for an internship,’ and I think just having those opportunities available for every school on campus is really important.”
Vaughn added that by expanding these programs, he can also acknowledge how the Career Center needs an expansion as well.
“I think, and this isn’t at the fault of the Career Center, but I think they are a little bit understaffed,” Vaughn said. “I think if we sort of raise awareness that the Career Center has the chance to be a really big force on campus, Seton Hall will give them the resources.”
When focusing on his second goal, which is improving the social scene at SHU, Vaughn turns to school events and the Green. He said he can see how much more active the social scene is during warmer seasons and wants to highlight that.
“When the weather is going strong, I want to make sort of ‘life on the Green’ a big thing,” Vaughn said.
However, when winter comes, Vaughn said he will focus on indoor events and clubs to keep the social scene at SHU active.
“I’m very well connected with the clubs on this campus, and my experience as treasurer has enabled me to see the power of club bases,” Vaughn said. “[As] somebody that has spent the past year working with clubs, it’s going to put my e-board in a good position to give clubs the resources they need.”
Vaughn also credits the Student Activities Board (SAB) and his competitor, Picone, for successful indoor activities on campus.
“I think this is an area where I think Rich does a really good job with all his experience with SAB,” Vaughn said. “SAB has a lot of really cool events that probably don’t get the turnout [the organization] deserves.”
Richard Picone
On the other hand, Picone’s goals are more varied. After one year in SGA, he said he has seen the potential for several new initiatives he hopes to complete as president.
One new initiative that Picone discussed was starting an SGA scholarship program.
“I want SGA to start a scholarship program [that will go] towards tuition,” Picone said. “I found from being in SGA, we have the money. The money’s there, so why not use it for something like that?”
Picone elaborated on his ideas for the program, explaining who would qualify and the many scholarship opportunities that he’d like SGA to offer in the future.
“You can apply for a freshman scholarship. A transfer student scholarship. [Something] for commuters…no matter what type of student you are, or what programs you’re in, you could find a scholarship through SGA that would apply to you,” Picone said.
Picone added that he is also looking to improve SHU’s dining experience and reduce food waste on campus by notifying students of the location of any leftover food from events hosted on campus. He’s finding these solutions by comparing SHU with other universities’ equivalents of Gourmet Dining Services (GDS).
“The way it would work is we would partner with GDS, so after every club’s event, students would either get a notification on the Seton Hall Mobile App or, like, a Canvas page,” Picone said.
Picone also said he has ideas on how to help students find alternatives to paying off their parking tickets.
“I’m already working with parking services and public safety to try and explore this idea, where basically at the end of every month we would partner with the Division of Volunteer Efforts (DOVE) and they would give us a list of items that they would want to donate for that month,” he said. “Students could get up to $50 in credit by donating items, and you can use that credit towards parking tickets.”
Though Picone said the program is already in the works, he reiterated it’s not finalized yet.
With all of these new ideas, Picone acknowledged that he also sees improvement for SGA as a whole through building student relations since the organization has been focusing on strengthening relationships with administration these past few years.
In Picone’s eyes, the most immediate way to improve student relations is to reach out to the freshmen as soon as they get to SHU. Knowing about SGA from the moment a student steps on campus allows them to understand how to properly get their voices heard by the SHU administration, according to Picone.
“I want to make it so that students have that welcoming hug from SGA when they first get here, and I work [in] orientation, so I think incorporating SGA into orientation [is important],” Picone said. “Whether it’s whoever the president is or whoever is around on campus that’s from SGA, someone should come and speak to all the freshmen just to have that informal meeting before.”
Candidate E-Boards
To keep the e-board grounded in current student issues, both presidential candidates’ tickets consist of a combination of previous SGA members and newcomers.
“Rich and I both agree on this point,” Vaughn said. “If your entire executive board has SGA experience, then you don’t have those fresh perspectives that let you know what SGA can do better.”
Vaughn’s e-board prides itself on proper representation of the student body and a healthy balance of experience for each position, he said.
“You’ve got the president, someone who has served on the SGA e-board before…you’ve got the secretary, somebody that has been a senator, voting member, finance committee member for years,” Vaughn said. “You’ve got the treasurer, who is an ad hoc, just got back from Spain…then my VP, Bryce Miller, known as somebody who has his hand in everything on this campus.”
However, as Vaughn said, Picone’s e-board is similarly balanced. His e-board consists of Mikayla Stepper as vice president, Olivia Silva as secretary, and Julian Aparicio as treasurer.
“Mikayla’s been involved in SGA since her freshman year, so I thought it was important to have someone like that…Olivia Silva, she’s an RA and then she became an orientation leader, so she was definitely passionate about wanting to improve student experience,” Picone said. “Julian was recommended to me by a few people because he was involved in Greek life, and he kind of stepped down from that role, and when we spoke, he was like, ‘I want to do something bigger.’”
Election Turnout
Hansen said he has faith in the future of SGA no matter which candidate’s ticket wins.
“Both Rich and Jack are a lot better managers than I am,” Hansen said. “They can both manage workloads and delegation a lot better than I have ever been able to do. I’m excited for whichever one wins.”
New events are hosted on campus to draw more attention to the election process, such as Pancakes and Policy on April 14, but junior visual and sound media major Marc Manapat said he believes the candidates do not campaign enough, leading to a lack of student interest in the election process.
“As somebody who’s that involved in campus, I barely hear anybody campaigning for what they want to do for the school,” Manapat said.
Despite the competitive election this year, SGA is worried about voter turnout, said current executive vice president Arianna Salazar. Salazar said that she has worked to increase the campaigning season from a few weeks to an entire month.
“I feel like the build-up with a month of campaigning allows more people to come in and vote,” she said. “I wanted to incentivize voting more, so I’m making this whole big deal out of it this year. We’re gonna get food trucks that come for both days of the election.”
Another example of Salazar’s events is Donuts for Democracy, hosted by SGA in October 2024, to encourage students to register to vote for the 2024 presidential election. Now, SGA will host the event again for its own elections.
Donuts for Democracy will be on April 23 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the UC front.
Voter turnout ultimately determines the success of SGA the following year, as it gives the administration a better understanding of student awareness, according to Roberts.
“Increasing student participation is the most effective way to improve the election process. Higher voter turnout strengthens SGA’s mandate and gives us better insight into how the process can evolve to serve students more effectively,” Roberts said.
Kaitlyn Campeau is a writer for The Setonian’s News section. She can be reached at kaitlyn.campeau@student.shu.edu.
