Modi won with the majority of the General Assembly votes at their Dec. 9 meeting.

Prior to the election, student government reporter Ashley Zhou spoke to Modi regarding their qualifications, proposed actions.

Q: What qualifications do you have for this position as VPGA?

A: 

Modi: “I have a really interesting kind of background I guess in what I want to do professionally. I want to be a physician as my career goal, but I’m really interested in health policy and policy advocacy. So that’s kind of where I really started to get involved with governmental advocacy because I really really care about health, and health is such a broad topic in my opinion. So in terms of things I’ve done and qualifications in the past, I’ve been involved in various political campaigns and so that’s how I really started to learn about politics and policy. I got involved in ASMSU actually last year, so the fall of 2020, the beginning of my sophomore year I ran for Lyman Briggs representative, and I got it. I was the Lyman Briggs representative for almost the entire academic year until the end of April. I wrote a bunch of bills, I think a dozen bills, I introduced or seconded a dozen bills. I’ve done a lot of governmental affairs-related bills, so things like advocacy on Title IX survivors, survivor advocacy, things like increasing MSU funding, COVID vaccines making sure people are encouraged to get COVID vaccines and it’s equitable like equitably distributed. ... I am the state liaison which basically means I handle all of ASMSU’s state-level advocacy. ... Overall I’ve been involved in ASMSU for over a year as well as really good experience at state, local and federal levels. I really feel like that equips me to run and kind of gives me some good background experience to be successful if I’m lucky enough to be elected.”

Q: What are your greatest strengths that you think would be helpful as VPGA?

A:

Modi: “My main thing that I’m trying to really get across is that I’m a pragmatic and realistic leader and so I’m really focused on prioritizing things that we really can work on finding a solution on things that can really get done. I want everyone to be really willing to advocate for whatever issues that is most important to them. I also want to work on creative ways that we talk with state, local, federal level leaders. There’s going to have to be compromises, there’s going to have to be a lot of discussions before things get implemented. I really think I’m really good at being a really good mediator, really good advocate while also being really realistic and pragmatic about what we can get done. So that’s my first main strength on why I really want to run. Second thing is probably I’m incredibly passionate about governmental advocacy. Like I said, I want to be involved in health policy for the rest of my life, so governmental affairs is something that is going to be a part of my career in the future, not just a hobby in the future. I want to make change at state level, federal level and local level. I think policy progress is the way we fix a lot of equity issues in our society. That’s another really strength I feel like I have: I have the passion and the background knowledge to be really enthusiastic about the role...”

A:

Modi: “Right now I’ve been working on a bill that would make an official ASMSU policy priority or policy advocacy item for funding increases from the state government to MSU. Again, this won’t be an action unless the bill passes on the GA meeting on Thursday, but if the bill passes then that’s a really big issue of mine that I feel like I can really realistically make an impact on. My hope is to work with the University government relations team to get meetings with people on the Senate like the appropriations committee, like people in the governor’s office to talk about how the budget can be written to increase the funding for MSU and kind of meet students’ needs. So that’s the first action I’m going to take is reaching out to people on this higher education appropriations advocacy. So that’s the first policy thing I think I’m probably going to end up tackling.”