Trio of juniors announce bids for DSG president

Juniors Annie Adair, Tara Bansal and John Guarco have announced their campaigns for the presidency of Duke Student Government.

The election will be held from March 1 until March 2 and will elect a replacement for current president Keizra Mecklai, a senior. A new DSG Executive Vice President will also replace Guarco and a new Student Organization Funding Committee Chair will replace senior Nikhil Gavai.

The three presidential candidates have each held roles in DSG as senators, vice presidents or cabinet members.

Adair is currently serving as DSG chief of staff. She was previously a senator for academic affairs and chaired the Young Trustee Nominating Committee this year. Her campaign plans to focus less on individual planks of a platform and more on a general attitude of change for DSG.

“I want to run as less of a checklist candidate and focus more on a guiding statement of ‘what DSG can do for you,’” Adair said.

She explained that she wants to make practical, visible changes for students and focus more on promoting dialogue between administration and groups like Blue Devils United and the Black Student Alliance in a “transformational rather than transactional way.”

While a member of DSG, she helped to push for the C5 bus route this past summer to complement the new C4 bus created by Parking and Transportation Services. She also focused on revising the Young Trustee nomination process during her time as chair of the YTNC.

Bansal is currently the DSG Vice President of Academic Affairs. Her platform is centered around making voting easier for students in an election year, increasing non-DSG presence on student committees and influencing the ongoing curriculum review process—including expanding student options for pass/fail classes and adding a new cultural competency program called Duke 101.

Bansal has been a part of several projects in her time with DSG, including working with students and administration to redesign ACES and adding a new housing option for independent students, the living-learning community.

“The living-learning community is a great way for students to have another option for community building and demonstrates my ability to work with both students and faculty to get the job done,” she said.

Guarco is the current executive vice president of the DSG Senate. His campaign will focus on six general goals, rather than individual projects: sexual assault prevention; justice and fairness in student conduct; increasing campus green spaces and energy efficiency; increasing campus diversity; improving student health; and continuing to work on curriculum review.

“I wanted to focus on these six pillars rather than individual policy goals, because often changes don’t come about on a holistic level,” Guarco said.

Guarco said that during his time in DSG, he was involved in changing University sexual assault policy to include victim amnesty—where drug or alcohol use by the victim of an assault will not be held against them in the investigation process. Guarco has also pushed for increased access to birth control for students and decreased use of neonicotinoid pesticides on campus.

The election will be held from noon March 1 until noon March 2. An instant runoff system will be used, similar to the one employed in the recent YT election. Students will rank the candidates in order of preference, but are not required to rank all the candidates for their vote to count, said DSG Attorney General Robin Zhang, a senior.

Juniors Ilana Weisman, current DSG vice president for equity and outreach, and John Turanchik, who was a senator for services in 2014-15, are running for executive vice president.

Juniors Alexa Soren and Neshmeen Faatimah and sophomore Gwen Geng are running for SOFC chair.

There are no constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Correction: This article was updated to note that Turanchik was a senator for services in 2014-15, not facilities and the environment. The Chronicle regrets the error.