Brandon Day wins SGA presidency

Ali Jones
Contributing Writer 

Brandon Day, the new president-elect of the Monroe Park Student Government Association, won the seat for SGA presidency with 1,066 votes, compared to his opponent, Mihir Baxi, who received 609 votes.

With his new administration beginning this fall, Day is looking forward to his new role. Day, a mass communications major, said the work and success of the SGA is dependent on compromise and collaboration between its branches.

“I think the SGA does a lot for the student body at VCU already, we just aren’t always the best at making it known what exactly we are doing,” Day said. “I do think the SGA will have to seriously consider what its mission and goals are, and do some serious realigning and prioritizing so we can establish how we can better advocate for students as their representative body.”

Day strongly emphasized the need to reconnect with the university in terms of student engagement, administrative relationships and communication with alumni, in addition to improving the involvement of VCU.

Day also said the awareness and cooperation of the student body is important to the success of the SGA. He said he will strive to strengthen the SGA’s presence on the campus.

“The SGA is committed to providing and serving VCU better than it has in the past, but you can’t do that with an unresponsive or unengaged community,” Day said. “We just need VCU to tell us how we can help and then give us the opportunity to do so.”

Prior to his new role as the SGA President, Day was the public relations chairperson for the SGA. He believes this role strengthened his knowledge on the importance of communication as an organization. The position also allowed him to work with other organizations across the campus, allowing him to observe techniques and ideas that increase effectiveness.

“I think with each president that comes in, you get a completely new perspective on how the SGA can improve itself … and the student body as well,” Day said.

“President (Vikhyath Veeramachaneni) and President (Jae Lee) both had their ideas on what the SGA should be doing for the student body … What might make my administration different from theirs would be my different past experience and how that impacts my thought process moving forward.”

The current SGA President, Vikhyah Veeramachaneni, said elections went well and that the candidates were extremely active in voter recruitment as well as campaigning.

“I think they will be very effective. I am confident the winners care about our student body and that passion combined with new ideas should make for another great year in SGA,” Veeramachaneni said.

Although he is unsure of what put him in the lead to eventually win the presidency, Day said he is confident in the support he received from his constituents and the effort he put in to get elected.

“I believe I worked hard campaigning and put a lot of thought and effort into my platforms that I shared when campaigning,” Day said. “I also tried to prepare as much as I could for the Presidential Debate that occurred the week before elections. I had a lot of brilliant support from friends and peers, so they were a huge factor in my campaign.”

Day also mentioned that he thinks highly of his opponent. He said Baxi is a great person with fantastic ideas and with very similar goals and platforms.

“I wasn’t really looking too much into what other candidates were doing with their campaigns because I couldn’t do anything about that, so I really tried to focus on my campaign as the only thing I did have control of,” he said.