The candidates for Student Body Vice President said they wanted to improve communication between the student body and the administration and advocate for issues like renaming campus buildings.
Faith Gravley, third-year political science student
Gravley is running on a ticket with Student Body President candidate Gurujjal Roopra under “The Catalyst Campaign.”
If elected, she said she hopes to make Student Government programs and initiatives more tailored to what best serves the students. She said her prior experience organizing programs through her involvement in Student Government would make it easier to run programs as Student Body Vice President.
“One of the things that I've learned and experienced through my programming initiatives is that every single year, the student body is different and the student body wants different things, and so we can't continuously stay in the same exact kind of mindset of ‘Okay, we'll do Key Week the same way we did last year and Stigma Free Week the same way we did last year,'” Gravley said.
Gravely said her ticket is committed to advocating to repeal the Heritage Act and fire USC faculty and staff members who were accused of sexual harassment. She said it is important to not only advocate for students, but to also give them the outlets and resources to advocate for themselves.
“It's really important that the university knows that we are not giving up, we are not backing down and that we're going to stand up for what we believe in,” Gravely said.
Gravley said she wants to push for the student body to have a vote on the university’s board of trustees. She said if elected, she hopes to speak with President-elect Michael Amiridis about securing a student body vote on the university’s board of trustees. She said Amiridis’ previous institution, the University of Illinois, had a student vote on their board.
Maia Porzio, third-year political science student
Porzio is running on a ticket with Student Body President candidate Reedy Newton under the Newton-Porzio “The Future Is…” campaign. She said a major point of her platform is to advocate for more space and funding for the university’s mental health services.
“I think that starts with us as students and being able to tell our executive boards that this is something that we need, this is something that we value and this is where we want our money,” Porzio said.
Porzio also said she wants to work towards reinstating mental health days like the ones provided when spring break was canceled during the spring semester of 2021.
“I know that was really important for a lot of us, having those days in the middle of the week where you were just able to catch up, take a breath, have nothing to do on your schedule and focus on you,” Porzio said.
While previous Student Body President Issy Rushton pushed for the return of wellness days, Porzio said that the new university administration under president-elect Michael Amiridis presents new opportunities to advocate for what students want.
“I know that every year just takes building off of what other students like Issy Rushton have done and being able to continue their applications or programs like this, because like I said, it's hard to get things enacted when you don't continually let them know that this is what the students value and this is what they need,” Porzio said.
Porzio also said she and her ticket would continue to advocate for buildings to be renamed on campus. She said she wanted to make sure names on new buildings on campus have names that better represent the student body.