Students here at Stevens are currently casting their votes in the Student Government Association (SGA) presidential election, with the voting period currently active until November 13. This year’s race highlights two inspiring visions for putting students first. Presidential candidate Noah Wachtel, a 3/4 Finance major, and vice-presidential candidate Alessandro Chavez, a 3/4 Mechanical Engineering major. Their opponents are Justin Safner, a 2/3 Economics major, who is running alongside vice-presidential candidate Kevin Matias, a 2/3 Mathematics major.
Wachtel & Chavez:
Wachtel and Chavez’s campaign slogan is “Suited Best For Your Success” and highlights three main points:
- Implementing transparency by expanding student access to SGA committees, increasing town hall and listening sessions, encouraging direct engagement with students regarding concerns, and overall simplifying the process of students reaching out to SGA for assistance.
- Increasing employment opportunities for students by encouraging administration to maintain accurate job postings, developing new pathways for both federal work-study and non-work-study students, and overall increasing on-campus employment opportunities.
- With over three years of combined experience working with administration, Wachtel and Chavez feel comfortable in their current position to continue building connections with administration to ensure student advocacy and address student concerns, while maintaining university leadership.
- Although not a main point in their campaign, they emphasize the library closure, and solutions include 24-hour access to Howe Center as well as initiatives that are currently being worked on.
Safner & Matias:
Safner and Matias’ campaign slogan is “Putting Students First,” and it highlights six main points:
- Addressing the loss of study space and accessibility due to the closing of the library for renovation, and in turn proposing to keep buildings such as the University Complex Center and Babbio Center open for 24 hours a day, all days of the week. This initiative would potentially use surplus funds from the Student Activity Fee funding
- Bringing attention to the connectivity issues in buildings such as Edwin A. Stevens, Babbio Center, and Gateway North and South. They feel that there should be reliable internet access, especially at a technology school.
- Focusing on building temperatures, since students have raised concerns about temperatures in classrooms, where they are most frequently overheating, especially during transitional weather periods. They propose to publish a transparent seasonal heating schedule that is tied to outdoor temperatures, along with regular review dates.
- Advocating for extended gym hours, which would implement earlier gym opening times and later closing times.
- Attempting to collaborate with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships to create more research opportunities for students, a more transparent application process, and overall more opportunity awareness.
- Rebuilding the relationship between students and administration and attempting to pursue monthly meetings with SGA and administration, public summaries of said meetings, formal student feedback periods, and overall transparency.
With voting remaining open until November 13, Stevens students now have the opportunity to determine who will represent their voice and be the face of Stevens for the 2026-2027 academic year.
