Running eerily parallel to the U.S. presidential election, it is once again time for Hoyas to engage in a GUSA election cycle. This year, two candidates have entered the bid for GUSA’s Executive. Polls for the GUSA Executive elections open on Tuesday, Nov. 5 at 8 p.m., and close Thursday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.
As with years prior, the ballot will use a ranked-choice voting system, allowing students to rank their candidate preferences, as well as write-in alternatives. Students will receive an email when voting begins with a link to Qualtrics, the online platform where the election will be held.
On Nov. 4, The Hoya hosted three consecutive town halls for the upcoming GUSA Senate and Executive elections. The third of the town halls allowed the two tickets vying for Executive candidacy to answer a series of moderated questions and concluded with an open invitation to questions from students in attendance.
Meet the candidates
This year, the two tickets vying for the Executive are starkly contrasted by their prior involvement with GUSA and their approaches to their candidacy.
The first consists of Ethan Henshaw (CAS ’26) and Darius Wagner (CAS ’27). Both Henshaw and Wagner have extensive GUSA experience, with Henshaw serving on the Senate since his freshman year and Wagner serving on the Financial Accessibility Committee of the outgoing GUSA Executive branch.
When asked why they were running for the GUSA Executive, Henshaw spoke about his previous work on the gender inclusive housing referendum, which in the Spring, as well as the work he and Wagner have done with Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions.
“[Wagner and I are] hoping to continue on that work and to use the connections that GUSA has with the administration to really ensure that we do a good job of making a safer place for marginalized communities on campus,” Henshaw said.
The other ticket, consisting of Allie Sanchez (MSB ’26) and Paul Sperber (CAS ’26), shared that they hope to bring a “new perspective” to GUSA if elected. Although Sanchez and Sperber are both newcomers to GUSA, the pair shared that they think this is one of their strengths as their goal is to be a “bridge” between GUSA and the “regular student,” according to Sanchez.
“I’m really passionate about Georgetown and I’ve just had an experience here and I want every student on campus to be able to feel that same love and acceptance that I felt here. And right now I see a big problem with the way that the student body can reach GUSA,” Sanchez said when asked why their ticket was running.
Role of the Executive and candidate strengths
Candidates were then asked to share their perspectives on the role of the GUSA Executive and what they believed would be their strengths if they were to be elected.
The Sanchez-Sperber ticket said that they believe the Executive is meant to, first and foremost, act as a bridge between GUSA and the student body. Sperber added that the Executive also plays an important role in holding the administration accountable in meeting the expressed needs of students.
Sperber added that their relative newness to GUSA would be a great benefit to their role.
“We’re in the best position to do this, because as fresh faces, a lot of students feel intimidated by GUSA, and we really feel like we remove this intimidation factor,” Sperber said.
As to their own qualifications, Wagner shared that his and Henshaw’s shared experience in advocacy work would be an asset to their tenure if they were to be elected.
“The reason we’re qualified is simply because we care about this campus. We have been passionate about the advocacy work that we do, to ensure that we’re expanding equality, making campus more fair, and also just trying to lift up spirits,” Wagner said.
Student indifference
According to The Hoya, a poll of students showed that roughly 70% of students were either indifferent to the result of the GUSA elections or did not intend to vote.
When asked why students should care about the upcoming elections, Wagner admitted that even as a freshman, he felt a similar disconnect to GUSA which he attributes to a lack of communication and outreach from the student government.
Although he understands why many students feel “checked out” from the daily happenings of the student government, Wagner emphasized that he and Henshaw were committed to reengaging the student body and seeing their goals through.
“I fundamentally believe that one way we can go about this is ensuring that we’re bringing in more talent. And, that students have trust in it,” he said.
The Sanchez-Sperber ticket reemphasized their newness as a major pull-factor for students to participate in the upcoming election.
“I feel like a large number of students never vote like they said 70%, and so it just signifies that a huge portion of the student body is missing from this,” Sanchez said. “I think it’s really important that people participate in this GUSA election, just because we do bring this new type of energy to the student body and to GUSA.”
For Sperber, their fresh perspectives would also help them to improve the transparency between GUSA and the student body, as he has observed that many students are largely unaware of current and past GUSA initiatives.
“We can engage more people and kind of shake things up in GUSA a little bit,” he said.
In his rebuttal, Henshaw agreed that transparency was a major point of improvement for GUSA. He shared that improving communication between the Executive and student body through existing channels was a priority if he and Wagner were to be elected.
Working with administration and the implementation of GUSA bills
Every year, there are often several bills that are reintroduced and passed by the GUSA senate that never follow through to the administrative level.
When asked what their ticket planned to do to reframe the Executive’s approach to working with administration so that bills are “implemented the first time around,” Sanchez said that her ticket plans to begin with a foundation of “realistic” and “actionable” goals that can be reasonably completed during their tenure.
Henshaw, however, said that his ticket’s primary strategy is to continue to increase communication between the Executive and campus administration.
“We’re bringing students attention to it, we’re using GUSA’s ability [and the] respect that GUSA has with the administration to really voice those concerns,” he said.
Wagner added that he and Henshaw’s have worked previously to achieve “impossible” goals. He acknowledged that their plan forward was to work with existing concerns and passion points to create action plans for working things out with administrators.
“If we can re-engage the student body…then we can begin to see how we can make GUSA work better, and how we can begin to have students actually see the results,” Wagner said.
In his rebuttal, Sperber added that accountability is a must for the incoming Executive team and GUSA to work effectively with students.
“Once we up the noise levels, make everything more public and increase transparency, then change will happen,” he said.
As a final note, Ethan added that a lot of the Henshaw-Wagner policy platform was derived from conversations with administrators, in addition to outreach to a number of student groups throughout their campaign.
GUSA diversity fund and spending
This year, GUSA’s new diversity fund has been designated a 30 thousand dollar portion of GUSA’s budget. When asked how they would envision allocating this fund during their tenure, the Henshaw-Wagner ticket highlighted the diversity fund as a way to incentivize collaboration between different organizations, such as those falling under the purview of the Students of Color Alliance.
“We’re hoping to make sure that it goes into the clubs on campus that are doing that work, that are bringing people together from different backgrounds, that are organizing fun events,” Henshaw said.
Sanchez agreed with this sentiment and shared that in her ticket’s goal for transparency, she and Sperger both hoped to encourage the formation of more inclusive groups and spaces for students of different backgrounds.
“I think a big portion of our policy platform is the idea of this inclusivity and these inclusive clubs and kind of creating incentives for people to start these inclusive clubs, so people have a place where they can feel comfortable on campus being themselves,” she said.
Other policies
The two tickets were then asked specific questions pertaining to their individual campaigns and policy platforms.
In reference to their policy of debit dollar reforms, Wagner shared that it boils down to the Henshaw-Wagner ticket’s desire for improved financial accessibility on-campus. Through his current work on the GUSA Financial Accessibility team, Wagner has already had experience working with administrators on improving financial accessibility for students.
He believes that giving students Debit Dollars, instead of only Flex, will increase the range of things students can buy and will “give students the ability to afford more resources.” This policy would allow students to purchase things that are not available through Flex, such as toiletries and some off-campus food.
Henshaw added that in preemptive conversations, some administrators have floated the idea of piloting this change with GSP students due to its relative feasibility.
Sanchez critiqued this policy, questioning the impact this change could have on campus-based organizations like the Corp, which relies on flex dollar spending from students.
“By making the debit dollars more accessible off campus, you’re taking away profits that are on campus groups, that [groups like] the Corp would make,” she said.
Sperber, however, recognized the potential merit in this policy change and tied it back to their goal to reduce textbook requirements across campus.
“I think it also goes hand in hand with our other policies of trying to get the university to actually pressure professors to scan readings, to not make students buy new textbooks every single year for the same subjects, and essentially continue these financially onerous policies when they could be saving students almost a thousand dollars a semester on textbooks,” he said.
Amidst their more serious policy positions, the moderators also brought attention to one of the Henshaw-Wagner ticket’s more “unserious” goals—swings for students.
Although he began his response with a lighthearted poll of the room (to which the majority seemed to be in favor of campus swings), Wagner explained that the goal of this policy was not necessarily the swings themselves, but rather the creation of more community spaces for students on campus.
Henshaw also added that the spending for this change would not take precedence over other policy positions, but would rather be completed through leftover funds after other priorities are taken into account.
Sperber criticized the potential use of funds proposed by the Henshaw-Wagner ticket, adding that leftover funds could be reallocated in other ways to address the relatively smaller, “daily nuisances” plaguing the student body.
“If there are some extra leftover funds. I think there are also a lot of other issues in accessibility that are kind of overlooked, particularly laundry rooms,” he said.
The Sanchez-Sperber ticket were then asked to further explain why they were the best fit to serve the student body as self-proclaimed “outsiders.”
Sanchez added that a large part of the student disconnect from GUSA could be attributed to her own poll of students around campus suggesting that students feel unrepresented by the current Executive.
“It just feels like people are so unrepresented by the student government that it’s not even relevant to a lot of people, the vast majority of people, I would even say,” she said. “It’s really important that we hit that group of people, again, who need their voice heard and who want to voice concerns.”
The Henshaw-Wagner ticket said that they too shared the desire of ensuring that more facets of the student body would feel represented through the changes they hope to implement.
“As someone who’s only been part of GUSA for one semester I have been able to see… how we can make it work, and how we can bring in people who have been left out of the GUSA process,” Wagner said.
The Sanchez-Sperber ticket was also asked how they have demonstrated a commitment to the student body when their opponents have extensively reached out to different organizations on campus.
Sanchez criticized the idea that candidates need to come from a highly involved background to be viable and accessible to the student body.
“That is kind of the exact problem with the current system that you feel like the people in GUSA are involved and heard in different organizations on campus and that they need to be running the school and be like set to become a congressman later in life,” she said. “That’s not what we’re trying to say and that’s not what your student body President and Vice President are supposed to be representing. We’re representing the people whose voices aren’t heard usually and who don’t identify with this group.”
She added that she believes her ticket brings the energy necessary to “get anything done.”
In his rebuttal, Wagner clarified that the Henshaw-Wagner ticket only had a collective involvement in a “select few” of the organizations they reached out to, and the primary goal of their outreach was to get a holistic perspective on the needs of students across campus.
“The reason why we decided to reach out to these groups is because we know we cannot do it alone. We can’t bring ideas to the table if we’re not actively engaging many different groups,” he said.
Each ticket was then asked to give their closing statements.
Closing Statements
Sanchez-Sperber is running to be the new face in GUSA with a fresh perspective on how to meet the needs of often unheard student groups.
“I can say confidently that we’re very passionate about the cause and want to do an amazing job for our student body and advocate for those people who aren’t usually heard or feel like they’re out of place at this school,” Sanchez said.
Henshaw-Wagner is running to implement policies rooted in communal care that they hope will improve representation for students across campus.
“We’ve tried to build out a platform that represents as many people as possible in this university, by meeting as many people as possible in this university, we’re going to continue doing that, making those meetings regular, and ensuring that GUSA [is] more transparent and more serving our community,” Henshaw said.
