New SGA president and VP share upcoming plans for Chapman community

New SGA President-Elect Rachel Berns (right) and Vice President-Elect Riya Belani (left) plan to reinforce the relationship between SGA’s student body and its constituency to increase community and transparency during the upcoming school year. Photo by Elyse Crimmins

Results for Chapman’s Student Government Association (SGA) elections were announced on March 8 to the campus community, declaring junior health sciences major Rachel Berns as SGA’s new President-Elect and junior health sciences major Riya Belani as the new Vice President-Elect for the upcoming 2023-2024 school year.

The annual SGA voting period was open from March 5 to March 8, with 14.99% of the Chapman student body casting their votes for both the president and vice president elections, according to a post regarding the election results on SGA’s Instagram.

The post also showcased each candidate’s individual results. Berns received 63.52% of the votes against fellow candidate Sydney Pfeifer-Picard, who is also the current senator for the Attallah College of Education Studies, with 36.48% of the votes. Forty-three people abstained from the vote, indicating that they decided not to vote for either candidate that was running for president.

For the vice president position, Belani received 60.50% of the votes against her fellow candidate, current Fowler School of Engineering Senator Tiffany Le, who received 39.50% of the votes, with 55 voters abstaining.

“We both were very lucky to have clean, respectful races against really incredible competitors, and everything went as smoothly as you can imagine for something like that,” Berns told The Panther.

The other positions contested for were the SGA Academic Student Organizations Senator and the SGA Greek Student Organizations Senator, as well as the revisions to the SGA Constitution. 

For the SGA Academic Student Organizations Senator, Eric Hall won the vote with 54.14% against candidate Roberto Arellano with 44.86% of votes. As for the SGA Greek Student Organizations Senator, Alison Taylor won the vote with 98.22%, running unopposed with 1.78% of votes being write-ins.

The amendments to the SGA Constitution were also voted on during the election, with changes including switching the one underclassman and one upperclassman senator to two first-year senators, one sophomore senator, one junior senator and one senior senator instead and also, adding in a new SGA committee to uphold the senate’s various initiatives each year. 

The constitutional changes needed at least 20% of the student body to vote for it to pass. However, due to only receiving a 16.10% voter participation rate, the amendments did not get passed. 

According to SGA, the changes would have helped to benefit the Chapman community and give students more representation and a stronger voice by having a different senator represent each grade. 

Berns has been a part of SGA since her freshman year, serving as SGA’s Lowerclassmen Senator in her first year at Chapman and as the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences Senator for her sophomore and junior years. She ran for SGA president last year and lost to current president and senior Alexis Reekie.

During her years in SGA, Berns has been working on and implementing several different initiatives for the Chapman community, including reducing class sizes in the Department of Health Sciences, pioneering the career and graduate testing fund initiative and developing robust academic resources, such as four-year plans for first-year students. 

She has many new plans and initiatives for her term as SGA President.

“I have spent almost three years in this organization, so my entire collegiate career has been in SGA,” Berns said in an interview with The Panther. “I have grown to have a lot of love for the positions that I have been able to hold and a lot of frustration knowing that we could do more — just seeing that there’s so much potential for SGA. It’s something that really empowered me to step into this higher role, essentially, and really ignite that spark throughout the Chapman community.” 

Belani, a current junior, has been a part of SGA for almost one year now, where she is currently serving as SGA’s Upperclassmen Senator as well as the Chair of SGA’s Diversity Affairs Committee. The committee addresses issues of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and works to advocate for underrepresented groups on campus.

During her time on SGA so far, Belani has served on the mental health and wellness subcommittee, advocated for student concerns by participating in a safety walk of campus with Public Safety, collaborated with restaurant services in creating the Sodexo recipe request form to create more diversified mean options for students and passed an SGA bylaw change that states SGA members must uphold DEI values.

“I was inspired to get involved with student government from hearing from Rachel's experience and knowing her since the beginning of college and her experience with being in it over the last couple of years,” Belani said. “I went into (the) running for vice president hoping to continue to speak the truth of the students for the general population (and) to continue to advocate for them, and I'm really just excited to work with Rachel knowing her commitment to the university and knowing her drive for the organization.”

Belani and Berns’ major focus for next year is to reinstate past initiatives, including the climate action plan and DEI resources that SGA has tried to implement that have “fizzled out” over time. 

“Our term will look different than any other term before because that’s just the nature of this organization, especially since there are still things we don’t know about or that could come up,” said Berns. “Riya and I have a big thing about finishing what's been started and not letting things die off. I know last year a lot of work was put into this climate action plan, which included sustainability initiatives, and it just fizzled out. I really want to see what happened and whether or not that’s something we could revisit.”

The pair plan to also work more with the student government members themselves to ensure that each elected official and senator have the tools and resources they need to best represent their constituents.

“Our job is mainly going around and addressing what needs attention and putting out fires, and if something happens next year, we’re here to put out that fire along with everyone else,” Belani told The Panther. “That’s where we can do best while also allowing other members within SGA to shine. I don’t need to help Attallah and Schmid and Crean and everyone all at once, but if I'm able to help enable them, then good things will happen.”

While some of Berns and Belani’s “tangible overarching goals are still a bit to-be-determined,” the pair look forward to working together to advocate and enact change that will benefit students, faculty and their fellow SGA members.

“People get really jazzed about really cool initiatives, but what I think is equally as important, maybe more, is streamlining student governments' process and making it efficient for the Chapman population,” Belani said. “Something that we’ve learned is there's a transition period within the university right now, so working with Struppa’s new five-year plan, working with the administration and making sure that students’ concerns are heard is really huge.”

One of Berns and Belani's top priorities for their presidential and vice presidential term next year is to continue to support students and advocate for them in new and various ways.

“It's really exciting to know that our term is not going to look like any other term that we’ve seen before,” Berns said. “We’re going to be able to support students in ways they haven't been supported before, and we’re going to address needs and find different routes for advocacy. There is so much opportunity for SGA and so much more that we could be doing, and I want us to do it.”