Presidential candidates Maggie White and Cesar Villeda based their campaigns on financial gains for students at the Student Government Association Q&A for its upcoming election. 

The election will begin March 9, at midnight. From there until March 10 at 11:59 p.m., Murray State students will have the opportunity to vote in the next representatives of the student body, on MyGate. A catalog of candidates can be found on either SGA’s social media, or from The Murray State News’s coverage of those running. 

Villeda will be temporarily replaced by Parker Johnson as director of election ways and means to protect the integrity of the election.

White, currently serving as the vice president of administration, said she wants to implement a program where students can donate their meal swipes to others through Sodexo, expand the food pantry to include fresh food and have the SGA executive board meet every student organization on campus and hear their interests and feedback on University matters. 

She also wants every student at Murray State to have Canva premium. 

“Canva premium is something that SGA would have to work very hard on, but it is very realistic,” White said. “They have packages available for corporations and for universities. So that’s something that would benefit the majority of our students, and I think that SGA would be happy to work on for our students.”

Villeda wants to raise the minimum wage for student workers. At Murray State, the minimum wage was raised to $8.50 last spring, but Villeda wants more. 

Neither White or Villeda elaborated how they would actionably deliver on these promises. Villeda said these topics involving money would be difficult, but hopes his time as a Chop treasurer would mean something. 

“What I mentioned about the student wages is being somewhat ambitious, just because anytime you’re dealing with money, you run into a lot of constraints,” he said. “Obviously, the University budget is a lot more complicated, but that’s one of the things that I’d like to push forward.”