OUR VIEW: Although all four candidates will serve the students well, we feel Andrew Gray and Andrea Mendoza-Lespron would make the strongest team in the SGA office. Gray’s effectiveness and professionalism and Mendoza-Lespron’s fresh perspective are our best bet for a successful student government.
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In case you live under a politically-apathetic rock, Shayla Owens and Andrew Gray are running for SGA president while Andrea Mendoza-Lespron and Tyler Garcia are running for SGA vice president. Voting opened via the MSU portal on March 14 and will continue through March 18 at 5 p.m.
It’s a rarity when there are no bad choices in an election, but we feel confident that no matter who is elected Student Government Association president and vice president, our campus will be in capable hands.
Gray has the leadership experience, not just in campus organizations but in his employment history. But by far his strongest quality is his knowledge of his own capabilities, now and in the future.
Gray has achievable and realistic goals, such as improving campus safety by improving the police call boxes on campus and the sidewalks. He also knows his role in getting those goals accomplished and has already gotten the ball rolling before getting elected. He knows that to get things done he has to work with administrators and faculty members, not just the students. Our concern is how he equated the administration on campus to the business executives he’s dealt with in his past employment. While you need political savvy to to appeal to people in charge, we can’t lose sight of student interests in the name of business interests.
We respect Gray for his flexibility and how he embraces the electorate’s feedback, even if it’s not all positive. He seems to take all comments in stride and has shaped his campaign accordingly.
Although Mendoza-Lespron has seemed to side with Owens thus far, we think she’d make the best vice president. Given some of the social issues recently on campus, Mendoza-Lespron will bring a fresh perspective to the office. Diversity, in all meanings of the word, is especially important in our student government.
Gray and Mendoza-Lespron are bold, have concrete goals that coincide with each other’s agenda, value a tolerant and inclusive campus, and want to make SGA more in tune with the voice of the students. As long as they can work together, there’s very little they can’t accomplish.
