The Interviews in this article have been edited for greater clarity.
Voting for the 2024-2025 Student Government Association closed on March 28th, 2024, and election results were announced at this month’s General Assembly Meeting! The new representatives of the student body for this upcoming year are as follows:
President- Victor Komosinski
Vice President- Siena Martin
VP of Info and Media- Archita Gupta
VP of Membership and Recruitment: Nina Angela Carvaja
Senators:
Gabrielle Ku
Michael “Enzo” Gaspar
Holly Rodriguez
Eliza Thompson
The Record had a change to talk with some of the elects and ask them some questions about their next steps once they take office.
Melissa Cosentino: To start off for both Victor and Sienna, what do you think set you apart in your campaigning that really locked it in for you guys?
Victor Komosinski: I think we kind of had a plan even before the election started. We were thinking about it for months beforehand. We had a couple meetings with the whole ticket, where we kind of talked about what we wanted it to look like and what we stand for way prior to the election actually starting. Then I think once it actually started, we were hitting the ground running—talking to people, getting our posters up, doing pop-up events and all kind of stuff like that.
Melissa Cosentino: Sienna, did you have a comment on that?
Siena Martin: Not too much to add, just that we were really committed to it from the start, so we kind of did everything we could to do like 100%, no regrets. So we could say we did everything.
Melissa Cosentino: Archita, I’ll go to you, our new Vice President of Media, congratulations! What is your plan when you dive right in? What are you going to change about the way SGA advertises and conveys their events and what they’ve done?
Archita Gupta: Honestly, like at first they didn’t do much, but then they started using their Instagram a lot, and I think I’m going to keep that up. Put up meeting updates, put up posters and tiny posts about what’s happening. And honestly, I want to include every club on campus, so I’ll be tagging them and making sure that their schedule is also on our SGA Instagram page and mostly, making it more active so that people who use their phones all the time will know what’s happening on campus.
Melissa Cosentino: Victor, you talked a lot about continuing what Garrett has started with the Student Life Canvas page; now that you’ve been elected, how you going to jump in and what are your first steps going to be in continuing that?
Victor Komosinski: Well, definitely the first thing is is just going to be reviewing what’s already there and what needs to be updated, I know a lot can change in a few months, people come and go and new officers are elected, stuff like that. So definitely the first thing would be making sure that all the information is correct and if it’s not, fixing that as soon as possible because the last thing we want is for people to not have the information that they need to get involved on campus, and immediately reaching out to clubs, reaching out to the officers of the clubs, and asking when they meet, what they do and getting the new information so we can get it up on the page as soon as possible.
Melissa Cosentino: For our senators, we have two here. Right off the bat, did you guys have any specific clubs in mind that you wanted to engage with or be a liaison for?
Michael “Enzo” Gaspar: Yeah, so I wanted to liaison for a lot of the science clubs because I’m a STEM major, but also we’re trying to restart the Filipino Peace Club and that’s a project that me and the VP of Finance, Nico, are working on. We want to help them out and we want to revive that club.
Holly Rodriguez: For me, I kind of had my eyes on either the Mental Health Club because my major is liberal arts, but I have a focus on psychology and we don’t have a psychology club. Either that or the ASL Club, I’m in ASL right now and I’m enjoying it. That or the book club, which is just newly created, I think would be really fun.
Melissa Cosentino: I had a question for you specifically Micheal, you’re a pre med major, and you’ve talked a lot about your focus on bringing more medical resources into RV. You have a pretty extensive background. Did you say you work as an EMT?
Michael “Enzo” Gaspar: Yeah, I’ve been an EMT for my rescue squad for 1.5 years.
Melissa Cosentino: Sure, okay, and in your newly elected position, what are our first steps going to be in bringing more medical resources to RV?
Michael “Enzo” Gaspar:: So I know we have a lot of, or at least the semester, we have more events, like the Narcan training is next week. So I just want to do more events like that, work with a lot of the health clubs here because even though there are different branches of medicine, like OT Club or the Nursing Association, I want to get all of them together because I think just teaching people basic, clinical skills is pretty important. Having that like community built is pretty good.
Melissa Cosentino: As a more general question, a big part of your ticket’s campaign was making the campus “more accessible”. I think that’s sort of general, does anybody want to elaborate on what specific steps we’re going to take for accessibility?
Victor Komosinski: I can talk a little bit about that so, I talked with a couple of students and one of the concerns was that there’s no braille on the door signs, which is a struggle for the visually impaired, and I know one of our senators currently and someone who’s also on our ticket is very interested in wheelchair accessibility and a lot of the doors either do not work properly or are just not managed. So that’s kind of something we want to work on because I think that’s, you know, we’re a Community College. It it shouldn’t be hard for all students to come on campus and to, you know, have a community that they can actually thrive in.
Archita Gupta: Other than that, I think a lot of us use public transportation to commute, and I know Nick wanted to work on it, but he’s not here, so I’ll talk about it. I know it’s not only on us, we’ll have to collaborate with Somerset County people and do things about that. But I think that would be one more thing we are trying to complete or do.
Siena Martin: And I’ll add that, I think we talked about this during the Meet the Candidates event, but trying to make information more accessible to people, especially first year incoming students, what they have to do as they’re enrolling in college, steps they have to take like getting registered for their classes and joining different clubs. I found, at least in my experience when I was registering to join over the summer, I found that it was hard to figure out what I had to do and all the steps I had to take. So I want to make that information more accessible for people.
Jacob Rodzen: How exactly do you plan to expand public transportation and more particularly, what would expansion look like? Where would it go that it does not currently go, and what improvements would you try to make with Somerset County and Hunterdon County?
Archita Gupta: Honestly, it was just an idea in our mind, but one thing is that the buses are not regular. Sometimes they cancel last minute, sometimes they’re like half an hour late, and it’s problematic, especially when you’re taking a bus and you know, you have a class in 30 minutes and then you don’t reach the class on time. We don’t know much about it, so we’ll have to actually review everything first and then we’ll dive into it.
Jacob Rodzen: The next question– this might be for Enzo specifically. How exactly do you plan to expand medical resources on campus, such as Narcan supplies and first aid kits?
Michael “Enzo” Gaspar: One of my SMART goals last semester in General Committee was getting a lot of the first aid cabinets restocked because I saw a really big problem in a lot of the highly populated areas like the cafeteria. They weren’t getting properly restocked, and even though medical emergencies don’t happen too often, you’re going to need those like supplies when they do happen. So I think just talking to Jason Fredericks about it and having the security onboard is going to help out with that, just because they’re going to be more aware of it. For other resources, I think the Narcan training is a really good resource and I want to get more of those kinds of events started around the school, like Stop the Bleed is a really easy event to do because you’re teaching people how to just stop bleeding and that goes back to me believing that a lot of emergency medicine skills are pretty easily taught. The people you teach aren’t going to need certifications to actually perform it, and I think having those interventions available to more students is important because you never know when you’re going to need to do something.
Jacob Rodzen: This is a question for all of you, do you believe that the food at Freshens can be improved? If yes, how so?
Archita Gupta: So for The Record, I interviewed the President and I asked him something similar, and he said that they’re trying to get more variety of foods on campus, and if it’s not Freshens, there’ll be some other company, I think, will be coming up and giving food which is more healthy and fun too! Freshens food can be healthy, but it gets boring after one point. So, we’re trying to do something, but I think it’s something that the Food Committee will look into and since we haven’t taken on office yet, we don’t know much about it, but I think we’ll be looking into it.
Kyle Nunez: I also want to ask the questions continuing on with the food idea. What type of food are you willing to see in the future if you’re willing to add on?
Siena Martin: I remember the other ticket, Unity and Community– this was like a standout point. They mentioned that they want more diversity in the food that served; a lot of them are part of MSA and they want more Halal food. Specifically, they’re talking about how Ramadan is happening and there aren’t a lot of Halal food options available on campus for people trying to break their fast. So I definitely think that’s a point from the other campaign that was really good, really solid, really important. And I think that’s something we should look into for sure.
Congratulations once again to the newly-elected Student Government at Raritan Valley Community College, and all other candidates who ran excellent campaigns this election season!
