Hai Tran and Julia DeMarco are running for president and vice president of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Student Government Association (SGA) and hope to bring their experience working as a team into the executive office.
Tran, the chair of the Undergraduate Registry Oversight Committee (UROC) and an operations and information management (OIM) and managerial economics dual-degree junior, has been a Senator for a year. Tran is also involved in Debate Club and Outing Club, along with several Isenberg-based initiatives.
DeMarco, who joined the senate last spring, serves as the vice-chair of UROC, heading up a committee to reform the RSO process. DeMarco is involved in sustainable fashion and the music scene, and is a member of the Prelaw Club and UMass Dissenters.
“I think a lot of our strengths really complement each other,” Demarco said. “… I think our teamwork is so great because we acknowledge that we don’t have all the information in the world, we don’t have all the abilities … It’s not our job to make these choices for people. It’s our job to make sure that everyone else has the agency to do what they need to do.”
Both Tran and DeMarco plan to broaden the ways in which SGA gets things done. “I think there’s a vast pool of talent[ed] student[s] that actually can help the SGA,” Tran said. “I acknowledge that SGA can’t just solve every problem by themselves.”
Tran pointed to conversations with students from BUILD UMass about reworking the Campus Pulse site as an example of a way campus organizations can be used to help implement SGA programs.
The goal, according to DeMarco, is to “create a system that kind of works by students,” using RSOs and agencies in planning to lighten the load and involve students in the SGA.
Tran also wants SGA to stop doing catering and contracting through external sources, and instead use student businesses. “I think [it would] be wonderful if SGA actually use[s] the money from the student[s] to put back into the student[s],” Tran said.
Both candidates see this effort as a way to address a lack of community and unity on campus. “It feels like everyone here is on their own path, rather than acknowledging that we’re all here together as students,” DeMarco said.
Involving more student groups has other benefits, according to Tran.
“I think that we found that the SGA sometimes it’s a little bit too exclusive from the top, and also it just a little bit too distant from the people they actually serve,” Tran said. “So we’re trying to go for … more of [a] student engagement kind of route.”
“We want to kind of broaden the SGA boundaries, I guess, and involve a lot of more students on campus, and just because of how closely we … work with students, I think we [are] pretty qualified for that,” DeMarco said.
Tran said that after talking to people in Grab ‘N Go lines, he found out that cup noodles were something people would love to be able to get from dining services, and he hopes to advocate for small changes like that.
Another primary focus for Tran is international and out-of-state students, which he says SGA and administration often don’t “pay too much attention toward.” Tran, who is an international student, described his confusion when he arrived at the airport to UMass, and hopes SGA can help organize a transportation program to and from hubs like Boston, as much as the Graduate Student Government does.
Additionally, the pair would like to figure out how to negotiate subsidized break housing.
“Everything we do, we want to make sure everyone has a say in it,” DeMarco said.
Daniel Frank can be reached at [email protected].
