Hey all!
It’s Sam and Ajanta here, and to say we are honored to be on the ballot (elections.gatech.edu) is an understatement. Our time in SGA has defined our college experience and our time serving the student body has brought incredible joy to both of our lives. We both have a history of dedicating ourselves to improving campus for you, the students.
Sam: As SGA’s current Vice President of External Affairs, I created the nation’s first ever fully student-staffed polling precinct at our very own McCamish Pavilion. I also authored recommendations for survivor-focused Title IX policy adopted by USG after communicating with stakeholders across our campus and the University System and recruiting the support of student body presidents across Georgia.
Ajanta: During my first two years, as a member and then chair of SGA’s Campus Enterprises Committee (which then focused on dining and retail), I played a major role in investigating the option of self-operated dining at GT, sharing these findings with GT Dining, and holding Aramark accountable for failing to meet their contractual expectations. These actions were fundamental to GT Dining’s official switch to self-op dining, which will happen this summer.
We plan to translate our experience within SGA and campus leadership to continue listening, advocating, and acting. As your President and Executive Vice President, we will choose to support the mental health of our students with actionable plans to make mental health calls safer, make counseling more accessible through expanding hours and the availability of multilingual staff, and make changes to policies like in-house scholarship GPA requirements and posting syllabi during registration to reduce unnecessary academic stressors.
We will reform OSI practices by introducing an expiration date for cases, only changing students’ record of good standing after hearings, and generally changing the harmful “guilty until proven innocent” culture.
We will choose to support equity and inclusion for international, BIPOC, transfer, low-income, and LGBTQIA+ students. We will choose to provide better options, allergen-labeling, and diversity in our new self-operated dining program. We will choose to support student employees through better pay options, conflict resolution pathways, and resources for handling high-stress, high-duty situations. We will choose to reform PTS, expand sustainable practices, support the arts, promote transparency from SGA and Georgia Tech Administration, reevaluate our relationship with USG, and more. We will choose to turn advocacy into action.
Thank you for being valuable members of our campus. Your experiences have truly taught us so much about how we can build a better Georgia Tech together. You can read more about our plan for campus at samajanta.com, and cast your vote at elections.gatech.edu now until Friday, March 26th at 5pm. This election, choose advocacy. Choose action. Choose Sam and Ajanta.