James Madison College representative Shaurya Pandya dropped out of the Associated Students of MSU presidential election. The election is now between social relations and policy senior Emily Hoyumpa and pre-med junior Zaaki Mandwee.
The day after ASMSU’s annual presidential debate, Pandya’s withdrawal from the election was announced via the ASMSU instagram story. Pandya said he intended to withdraw from the start of his campaign.
“My intention was not to actually complete the race fully,” Pandya said. “I wasn't ever attached to the idea of being president. I wanted to run a campaign that could demonstrate that you can create and talk about different changes without having to be president.”
Pandya served as a James Madison representative for the ASMSU general assembly for two years and was recently re-elected to the position for the third time. He said he ran for president this term to communicate concerns with the way the Office of the President, or OOTP, is viewed within ASMSU.
“The attachment to OOTP at ASMSU, in my belief, like the sheer internal politics that goes from people fighting so hard to be a part of it, has ultimately damaged the organization,” Pandya said. “Because it has created this whirlpool of internal politics that hurts the mental health of members inside, that damages the type of advocacy that we do, and that fosters this vitriol between the students, OOTP and GA members.”
Becoming president would not have helped the problem he saw, Pandya said. He said running a campaign that advocated for systemic change would be more impactful. The basis of his campaign was ending the “cyclic pattern of miscommunication and disconnection between all three aspects of the Student Government,” he said.
“I did not want myself to be put in a situation where I become what I am trying to fix,” Pandya said.
Pandya said communicating these concerns during the presidential debate was essential to creating change. He said it was important to get support for the issue “on the record” and to get a majority of members on board.
“If you are entering the race with that same cycle in mind and you're using that cycle to win, then you're not going to be fixing the problem unless you're going on the record saying, 'the first thing I'm going to do is change what got us here in the first place,' and then actually doing it,” Pandya said. “Now, I have that ability to voice whether or not that's being done.”
