Justine Hastings and Ryan Golden’s first priority as president and vice president of Syracuse University’s Student Association is to work on accountability and communication within the organization.

The pair was elected shortly after midnight on April 17 and will be sworn into their respective positions on Monday. They ran against two other pairs of candidates: Morgan Eaton and David Williams on one ballot and Sadia Ahmed and Yanan Wang on another.

“Communication, outreach, that’s on us,” Hastings said. “So that’s one of the biggest things that could be done.”

Hastings and Golden’s campaign centered on five platforms: support for marginalized communities, campus accessibility, financial accessibility, SA accountability and student voice. They plan to immediately start working with SU administration and members of SA to reach these goals, they said.

The pair campaigned for including students’ preferred names on university identification cards. Their goal is to ensure SU makes this change before the start of the fall semester, Golden said.

Sharing the minutes from all SA meetings with students via email is another priority of their administration, Hastings said. The duo will also begin working to implement Callisto, a third-party sexual assault reporting system, Golden said.

“Our first steps will be starting conversations surrounding issues,” Golden said. “We want to make sure we start the ball rolling early.”

Over the summer, Hastings and Golden plan to help address the concerns of students that the coronavirus pandemic has affected, they said.

The decision to resume on-campus classes in the fall will be based on guidance from local, state and federal health officials, Chancellor Kent Syverud said in a press release April 16.

“Now that we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, what’s going to have to take priority (is) what students need,” Hastings said.

Hastings and Golden plan to have their cabinet filled by the first Assembly meeting of the fall semester. They will look for passion, experience and diversity in each of their cabinet members, they said.

“Because a lot of our platforms are going to be ambitious and take a lot of time to implement, passion is a big deal for me,” Hastings said.

Hastings, a member of #NotAgainSU, said she and Golden would also like to make members of the movement aware of SA’s influence and encourage them to take part in the organization.

#NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students, has protested SU’s response to a series of over 32 racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic incidents that have occurred on or near campus since November. Hastings and Golden both support the movement’s demands.

“A lot of the core organizers are my friends, so it’s always weird talking about (#NotAgainSU) as a separate entity,” Hastings said.

#NotAgainSU has called for the resignations of several university officials, including Syverud and the Department of Public Safety Chief Bobby Maldonado. Hastings and Golden have said they support the movement’s calls for Syverud’s resignation.

Hastings wants to use her platform to hold the university accountable, not act as an appendage to SU administration. She and Golden are considering different ways to pressure the administration if it does not take their platforms seriously, she said.

“As of right now, I know that Chancellor Syverud, he’s extremely stubborn and adamant about not wanting to resign,” Hastings said. “Ryan and I actually felt like we could be ambitious with our platforms because the university administration is at a place where they need to prove themselves.”

Published on April 26, 2020 at 8:10 pm

Contact Maggie: mehicks@syr.edu | @maggie_hickss