Candidacy and competition increases for 2023-2024 ASI elections
March 28, 2023
The Associated Students Inc. elections for the 2023-2024 year are looking different than previous years at California State University, Bakersfield.
All positions on the executive board, including the president, executive vice president and the vice president of legislative affairs are positions that students will be able to vote on this election.
This year’s ballot will look a little different than the one for the 2022-2023 year. The only presidential candidate last year was Carson Vollmer, the current president and CEO of ASI, according to the April 6, 2022 issue of the Runner. However, this year, there are two candidates for president, Daisy Alamillo and Jacob Roper.
More differences on the ballot this year include: two executive vice president candidates, Christian Burgara and Ignasio Castillo; two candidates for vice president of legislative affairs, Taylor Thomas and James Tompkins; and only one candidate for vice president of university affairs, Larry Gonzales.
There are three candidates for vice president of finance: Simranjeet Kaur, Kayla Medina and Coby Nguyen. There is only one candidate for Vice President of Campus Life, Alejandro Romero.
There are two slates from the executive board candidates that are running together: CSUB Elevate and Runners Rise.
CSUB Elevate is comprised of Presidential candidate Jacob Roper, Executive Vice President candidate Christian Burgara, Vice President of Finance candidate Kayla Medina, and Vice President of Legislative Affairs candidate James Tompkins, with their slogan “Elevate to the extraordinary,” according to the @csub_elevate Instagram account.
Runners Rise is comprised of Presidential candidate Daisy Alamillo, Executive Vice President candidate Ignasio Castillo, Vice President of Finance candidate Coby Nguyen, Vice President of Legislative Affairs candidate Taylor Thomas, Vice President of University Affairs candidate Larry Gonzales, and Vice President of Campus Life candidate Alejandro Romero, with their slogan “We run so you can rise,” according to the @runners.rise Instagram account.
Students will also be able to vote on all of the Director’s Board positions, including Director of Transfer Students, Director of Sustainability, and Director of Student Support.
There are currently nine director positions that students will be able to vote on, while the remaining eight director positions are open and have no current candidates running for those spots.
On March 27, there was an open forum and debate for all the candidates. All students and campus community were invited to attend and participate, and the forum was held in the Student Union’s MPR from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Voting for ASI will open on Wednesday, March 29, at 8 a.m. and will close on Thursday, March 30, at 11:59 p.m. Students will receive a link to a SurveyMonkey poll in a CSUB email from Illaria Pesco at the email addresses [email protected], as elections will be held fully online.