SGA Election Season Kicks Off

Courtesy of Marist SGA

Election season for the Marist College Student Government Association (SGA) is now underway, and numerous key positions are set to be filled.

The race for student body president and executive vice president ended before it even started, with Sheridan Speight ‘25, current SGA vice president of academic affairs, and Evan Spillane ‘25, Class of 2025 president, running unopposed for those respective positions. If they manage to secure the required 400 student signatures needed to appear on the ballot, then they will become the new faces of the SGA.

The race for the Class of 2027 presidency is the most competitive, featuring three candidates currently vying for the position. The rising senior class has Glenn Halliday ‘25 in an uncontested election for class president, while the same scenario occurred within the Class of 2026 with Ethan Solury running unopposed. If each candidate can garner the 100 student signatures required to qualify for the ballot, they will secure their positions and begin appointing candidates to fill out their class’ board. Other roles on each board include the secretary position, treasurer and archivist.

The online student voting period will open on Monday, Feb. 26, and close on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 5 p.m. Marist students will receive an email with instructions on how to vote using their MyMarist page, and a live voting booth will be run by the elections commission near the student activities office. Election results will be announced on Feb. 28 at 9:30 p.m. at an announcement night event.

“Only one person is running for student body president and one person running for executive vice president, which is the first time that this has happened in a while,” said SGA Director of Elections Carly Malfatto ‘24. “We usually have at least two to three ticket items. There isn’t much of a competition this year.”

The first step in qualifying for each race involved attending one of the mandatory information sessions held last week. Candidates are also required to be undergraduate, full-time students taking a minimum of 12 credits with a GPA requirement of 2.5. Lastly, they must adhere to the aforementioned signature requirements to appear on the ballot, rules that are in place to ensure that candidates engage with the student body while trying to earn votes.

“If they can't obtain the signatures, that probably means that they shouldn't be on the ballot,” said Malfatto.

With the race for SGA’s top two positions effectively over, some notable changes will take place in the election schedule. While the informal “Meet the Candidates” event will still take place outside of the Fusco Music Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 14 and “Speech Night” is set for Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 9:30 p.m. in the Cabaret, the annual debate night slated for Thursday, Feb. 22 is likely to be scrapped in favor of a Q & A session featuring Speight and Spillane.

“Debate night is supposed to be between those who are running for our student body president,” said Malfatto, “but since there's only one ticket, I'm thinking we're going to do a Q&A session where students can come in the audience, walk up and ask because there's really no debate to be happening.”

Malfatto expressed her satisfaction in having every position declared by at least one candidate, meaning that no current candidate vacancies exist. Yet she also acknowledged that candidate interest may have been more robust if the election timeline had started later in the semester. Malfatto explained that the election process commenced immediately when students returned for the spring semester to allow for enough time later in the term to carry out the transition process between the old and new administrations. Because of the early start to the election process, Malfatto believes that many students were not yet settled in upon returning to campus, leading to a lack of knowledge about the electoral races.

“The turnout rate was fine, but it's not necessarily what I would have hoped,” said Malfatto, “but we did everything that we could; we made videos, emails and we sent out flyers.”