Corbin-Johnson & Vandegriff

Shavonnia Corbin-Johnson (SFS ’14) and Joe Vandegriff (COL ’14) cited their wide engagement in student groups ranging from the Black Student Alliance to Jumpstart as their ticket’s defining characteristic.

The pair is focused on promoting social justice through different aspects of student life.

Their initiatives include introducing monthly service projects through the CSJ, pushing for gender-neutral housing, recruiting black and Latino professors, ensuring protected speech for O’Donovan Hall workers and increasing awareness of sexual assault on campus.

“These are not only campaign platforms; these are life priorities for us. Our work outside GUSA really shows our commitment to social justice and diversity,” Vandegriff said.

The ticket proposes increasing student engagement and student rights through a Student Group Forum within GUSA that will hold regular meetings with student leaders.

“To me, GUSA has almost fallen into a referendum — a year and you’re done. ‘Clear and convincing’ was phenomenal, but the problem to me is that it’s four months later and you have freshmen asking, ‘What does GUSA do?’” Vandegriff said. 

Vandegriff specified that their ticket is pushing for a “movement” rather than a campaign.

“A movement is a collective push of ideas. We want people to take ownership of what that movement is, so if we take office, when we’re trying to rally support for these initiatives we’ll have people behind these movements already,” he said.