Editor-in-Chief

The two most important positions in the Associated Students Inc. are running unopposed.   Mariela Gomez and Precious Nwaoha are running for presidency and executive vice president respectively.

Both Gomez and Nwaoha essentially have won the positions.

“As soon as campaigning started I thought about this essentially being my first day in office,”said Gomez.

Nwaoha said she the campaign is not as lively.

“I am disappointed that we don’t have anyone running against us,” said Nwaoha.

According to The Runner archives, for the last six years the president position had always ran a contested race.

Both Gomez and Nwaoha say since they are unopposed, it is their duty to help students understand what ASI is doing for them, and help other candidates campaign.

According to ASI Executive Director Ilaria Pesco, running unopposed is common.

“It actually happens more often than you would expect.  At a lot of CSUs, this is the case. It’s interesting here that you consistently have people running for positions. I think here, you are even lucky to have multiple people running,” said Pesco.

Pesco thinks one reason could be students are intimidated about running with two seasoned ASI candidates. Nwaoha served her first year on ASI served as Budget Manager and Gomez served Campus Pride.

“You have two very qualified candidates who’ve been in ASI for two years, who’ve done a tremendous amount of work. Some people may say, ‘I don’t want to run against that.’ It’s hard to say why they are [running unopposed],” said Pesco.

Alex Dominguez is the current ASI president but will not run for reelection because he will be graduating this semester.

The applications were open from March 10 to March24. This gave students 11 business days to turn in the application. Information about the elections was disseminated by social media, presentations in classes and 75 posters hung around campus.

There was only one email sent by Suzette Tischmacher who works in the Student Affairs on March 22, two days before the deadline.

According to Pesco, the application period has not changed even with the bylaw changes the ASI board has made this semester.

“It was the exact same. In terms of the election code, the changes that were made by ASI, none of them had to do with the timing. The timing has remained consistent,” said Pesco.

“In an effort to be more sustainable and in efforts to catch up with the times we moved [applications]online,” said Pesco.

Information shared by ASI to the students included flyers, announcements on social media, and  posters around the campus.

“It’s obvious who’s going to win. I just hope that they will be better than the current board,” said engineering management major Esteban Martinez.

Social Media has played a key part of ASI’s advertising.

“As long as they follow the [ASI Instagram], students would know, but I haven’t seen [promotion of elections] on campus,”said Martinez

Pre-nursing major Leslie Aldama has seen the information on social media and on posters.

However, she still feels uninformed.

Some students feel running unopposed defeats the purpose of the election.

“[Running unopposed] takes the challenge out of the elections. There doesn’t have to be an election because you already know who the winner is,” said computer engineering major Christopher Coleman.

Psychology major Dylan Kumar thinks perhaps students do not want to be in a position of power.

CSUB student Jacey Cruz thinks that running unopposed does not allow for ideas to be exchanged or presented to the students.

“If you are running unopposed, it doesn’t give the chance for competing ideas, in a positive sense, and it is not surprising because we are a smaller school,” said Cruz.

Out of the 23 positions available, six are vacant however other than the president and the executive vice president positions, six positions are running without contest. 

Read our full elections coverage here: https://therunneronline.com/category/asi-elections/