The candidates running for Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) President and Vice President for the upcoming academic year met for a debate in the Public Affairs Center on Tuesday, April 23. Elections for both positions opened on Monday, April 22 and close Friday, April 26 at 5 p.m. on WesNest. Current Student Budget Committee (SBC) Chair Jonghwa Kim ’25 is running for president with Equity & Inclusion Committee Chair Tanvi Navile ’25 against Community Committee Chair Ben Shifrel ’25, who is running with Academic Affairs Committee Chair Claire Stokes ’25.

The event was moderated by Argus Editor-in-Chief Sam Hilton ’25 and Staff Writer Sulan Bailey ’25. Discussion centered around student protest, SBC funding, and previous WSA experience, with prepared questions from The Argus and a segment for audience questions afterwards. The debate began with two-minute opening statements from each candidate.

In her statement, Stokes spoke of her previous experience creating academic accommodations policies, restructuring the textbook exchange program, working to improve First-Generation Low-Income (FGLI) advising, and developing new mandatory excused absence policies.

“As your vice president, I will advocate for more academic support for FGLI students through major committees and advising,” Stokes said.

Stokes plans to advocate for formalizing student activities and initiatives and giving them mandatory support from staff so they can continue each year. She also wants to create more ways for students to share their needs with the administration by bridging the gap between the WSA and student organizations.

Shifrel worked towards equity during his time as SBC Chair by removing funding caps, thus allowing larger groups to request money, and approving food requests for identity groups’ bonding events.

“My involvement has given me valuable experience dealing with the university administration,” Shifrel wrote in his candidate statement on WesNest. “Transparency, communication, and openness on campus are more important now than ever. As president, I will champion these values, whether it be with [President Michael Roth ’78] or the Board of Trustees.”

Shifrel also pledges to provide more oversight and support for the Concert Committee and to improve campus amenities.

Navile emphasized providing institutional support to high-need students and underrepresented communities. She spoke to her experience working with the FGLI Advisory Board to improve mental health resources on campus and institute policies around housing justice.

“In my role as Vice President, I will aim to emphasize the importance of transparency between students and administrators and work intentionally to embolden student voices and issues, especially in times of protest,” Navile said in her opening remarks at the debate. 

Kim closed opening statements by focusing on his work on the SBC and the Community Standards Board, where he has advocated forbearance in the assignment of penalties.

“This year has seen a large uptick in student activism and protests around campus and a subsequent dialogue on what the university’s response should be,” Kim said. “Beyond my role in the WSA, I’m also a member of the Community Standards Board (CSB), which adjudicates these cases. I’ve been one of the most lenient voices on CSB, and I believe that experience uniquely qualifies me to address student activism and protests and to protect student protesters from discipline.”

Moderated questions began by asking about the candidates’ positions on WSA’s engagement with student and administrative response to the Israel-Hamas war and the degree to which the University is financially or institutionally involved.

“I believe WSA’s role in this conflict is to convey student voices to the administration and to ensure that every student has their voice heard and is protected from retaliation,” Kim said. “I worked to reestablish the Committee [for] Investor Responsibility, which communicates directly with the Board of Trustees Investments Committee to make recommendations on the endowment and how it is invested, including divestment. This experience is really valuable, and I will use it to continue to make channels for students to interact directly with the Board of Trustees and upper [administration].”

Navile also emphasized that WSA senators have a direct channel to communicate student opinions to the administration. These sentiments were echoed by Shifrel, who also pointed to pre-existing relationships between WSA leadership and the board.

“The leadership of the WSA sits in board meetings, and the President of the WSA can…provide input and insight,” Shifrel said. “We haven’t necessarily used that resource—that we’re given an actual seat and a voice—as much as we can…. That is a change that we can definitely make.”

Kim also spoke about creating spaces for students, especially student activists, to interact with the board of trustees directly.

In a similar vein, Stokes expressed her desire to create opportunities for Roth to speak with students in a bigger setting than General Assembly meetings and to streamline the process by which students ask him questions.

The moderators’ next question concerned the SBC, which oversees one of the most direct and consequential interfaces between the WSA and the student body: the evaluation of club funding requests. Shifrel served as this committee’s chair for the 2022-23 academic year, and Kim is serving in the role for 2023-24.

Club funding has been tight in recent years, as students noted during the consideration of a WSA amendment that increased the Student Activity Fee from $300 to $390 to account for inflation. The amendment, which Kim sponsored, passed a schoolwide referendum with a two-thirds majority this February.

The moderators also highlighted that, in a Spring 2023 amendment sponsored by Shifrel, the WSA also voted to provide stipends of $850 for senators and $1300 for members of the Leadership Board each semester, with the funds coming from the Student Activities Fee, as well as 50% covered by federal work-study funds for eligible students. Bailey asked the candidates whether they would prioritize maintaining these stipends or meeting demand for club funding, if forced to choose. 

Kim and Shifrel agreed that club funding is the top priority for the WSA, but emphasized that other budget reorganizations, past and future, would render the question moot.

Members of both tickets highlighted that some revenue from the SAF currently helps to fund Spring Fling and the operation of the Office of Student Involvement (OSI). In December 2023, current WSA President Orly Meyer ’24 also expressed concern about the use of student activities money for things other than clubs and indicated that change was in motion.

Shifrel and Stokes emphasized that club sports are the highest expense for the SBC, and they hope to help club sports organizations secure more funding through the Athletics Department, which might simultaneously help club sports players access more training resources. Shifrel suggested using some of the WSA’s own budget to help meet the needs of student groups, and the ticket aspired to alleviate OSI’s burden by reallocating event planning work to auxiliary committees.

“We’re also hoping that by improving the relationship between the WSA and auxiliary committees like the Spring Fling Committee and the Concert Committee, the work that is being placed on to OSI can be rightly delegated to committees and taken off their plates,” Stokes said.

Kim stated that he hopes to spend less SAF funding on salaries for OSI employees, instead requesting additional funds from the University for this purpose.

“[Tanvi and I would] work closely with the [Office of] Student Affairs to coordinate a new money request to hopefully take some of that burden of salaries off of our backs and onto the University,” Kim said. “This is a plan that we’ve talked over with OSI [staff] and [for which] they’ve indicated some support.” 

Kim stated that over his time as SBC chair, he was able to increase the student activities budget by $50,000 by reallocating funds from inactive projects, in collaboration with the administration. Kim also promises to increase the budget by an additional $100,000 next year. Even though the idea of decreasing OSI staff has been floated in General Assembly meetings, Kim said the funding increase would not come from terminating OSI positions. Instead, he would hope to allocate funding more efficiently and draw on the WSA’s endowment.

“We pre-allocate a lot of money into Smartkeys, which are kind of like different buckets of money, and once that money is in there, we can’t use it for anything else until the end of the year,” Kim said. “What I will do is take money out of those Smartkeys. For instance, I noticed that the WSA Senator Compensation Smartkey has a lot of money that’s unused because [senator stipends are covered in part by] work-study. That’s an extra $20,000 or $30,000. We’re also going to start withdrawing from the WSA’s endowment at a sustainable rate to continue to support student groups. That’s an another $20,000 or $30,000.”

Director of Student Involvement Joanne Rafferty stated that obtaining $100,000 in additional student activity funding would require drawing on the WSA endowment, an action that involves approval from multiple student leaders and campus administrators.

“The only way to do that is by dipping into the endowment or reserves and that is not a decision that the WSA President can make on their own,” Rafferty wrote in an email to The Argus. “In fact, the SBC chair would be the major contributor / initiator for that decision along with the OSI Fiscal Management Coordinator.”

Shifrel agreed that utilizing funds more efficiently would be important for the WSA in the coming years and expressed a hope that, regardless of the election’s outcome, he and Kim could work together to achieve this.

The candidates also responded to a question about their experience serving the student body by working with an office or organization on campus. Shifrel mentioned his ties to several communities on campus through his jobs and extracurricular activities. 

“I’m involved in a lot of things around campus, from music, to [the] art scene, to club sports,” Shifrel said. “I work in [the Office of Admission] and the package room. I’m very well equipped with a lot of connections throughout the school and involved in a lot of different worlds.”

Kim has worked with the Office of Student Involvement, the Athletics Department, the Office of Finance, and the President’s Office in his time on the WSA.

Stokes has been involved in the Educational Policy Committee for her entire tenure as a senator and aided in the creation of the Integrated Design and Engineering Studies (IDEAS) major and minor tracks, as well as the passage of new policies around considering student mental health in course syllabi.

Navile has worked with the housing justice movement on campus to improve the summer storage program and with the Office of Equity and Inclusion to manage First Cardinals, an FGLI mentorship program.

The debate did not involve any direct disagreement. The candidates instead highlighted their areas of experience and proposed priorities; in response to a question about ideological differences, Navile said that she did not fully share the other ticket’s focus on club sports funding.

“This isn’t necessarily a disagreement, but…as VP, my priority would be for student needs,” Navile said. “It would be directly attacking the institutional issues that limit what students have access to on this campus. We think about the [dining] points system—why are students starving on this campus? There are a lot of issues that need to be solved. And I would much rather prioritize those than club sports, even though club sports are very important and very fun.”

The tickets appeared to agree almost completely on the ideal future of the WSA, which Shifrel attributed to their shared experience in the organization.

“We’ve worked together for a long time,” Shifrel said. “So it makes sense that we kind of have similar beliefs. We’re all on the same team. We will be on the same team, no matter what happens after this election.”

All undergraduate students can vote in the election through WesNest or through a link found in an email sent to the student body by WSA Election Coordinator and Chief of Staff Hazel Allison-Way ’24.

Anne Kiely can be reached at afkiely@wesleyan.edu.

Rose Chen can be reached at rchen@wesleyan.edu.