USG Presidential Candidate Profiles

Michaela Murphy & Meagan Lane

“What’s the word for bromance for women?” USG Senator Meagan Lane asked. She paused, then suggested, “Womance … but that’s kind of gross.”

The only non-write-in candidates this election, Michaela Murphy and Lane view their relationship from this lens of affability. Having worked together as senators this semester, they hope to continue their legacies as president and vice president, respectively.

Murphy, a junior majoring in public policy, and Lane, a junior majoring in business administration, say their experience working as senators in USG has allowed them to build strong relationships with administrators.

“We have the most direct experience with understanding what it takes to actually make legislative changes, make administrative changes,” Lane said. 

In addition to their roles as senators, Murphy is the Director of Outreach for Trojan Advocates for Political Progress, and Lane is a member of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.

If elected, they hope to expand many of the initiatives they worked on as senators, such as implementing full-cost coverage for STI/HIV screenings, advocating for student input on university decision-making and helping reinstate tuition remission for custodial staff and their children. 

Their platform also includes establishing a first-year mentorship program, expanding cultural centers and unionizing student workers, as well as accepting dining dollars in USC Village, creating fee waivers for transcript appeals and improving housing insecurity resources. 

Like many Senate candidates, they hope to increase access to health care on and off campus and develop sustainability by improving recycling and composting. 

Murphy and Lane are currently working on several projects as senators, from establishing an oversight board and allocations process for the USG Diversity Fund to hosting a shared governance symposium. 

“You can sum up our entire candidacy with this idea that we are not running on hopes and dreams, we are running on proof,” Murphy said. “We’ve done the work, we just want the opportunity to keep doing the work.”

Trenton Stone & Mahin Tahsin

Trenton Stone, a sophomore majoring in philosophy and cognitive science, and Mahin Tahsin, a junior majoring in business administration and economics, hope to transfer their experience as USG funding directors to the roles of president and vice president.

“One of the really cool perspectives of funding is that you’re in USG, but at the same time it’s one of the most externally facing roles,” Stone said. “You’re directly working with dozens of organizations every week to fund these applications, to meet with them, to learn about their events, to see how you can meet their needs financially.”

Stone and Tahsin are write-in candidates. They announced their campaign on Jan. 22, about a week after the first wave of candidates. When only one presidential ticket declared, Tahsin approached Stone and proposed the idea of running to provide a different choice to students.

If elected, they hope to continue advocating for civic engagement by funding different student organizations and initiatives, Stone said.

As the USG Director of the Professional & Academic Fund, Stone worked to improve awareness of funding resources offered to students.

“USG and USC can often seem like a roadblock or a big bureaucracy that people don’t know how to navigate or don’t even know is a resource,” Stone said. 

To better publicize resources, Stone and Tahsin propose creating a central system where students can type in any questions they have and receive a list of suitable resources and explanations, modeled after an existing virtual wellness assistant developed by the Office of Wellness. 

“One of the hurdles of being as large of a university as we are is there are a lot of resources, but it often feels very disjointed, spread out between offices, and you’re not sure how to navigate that space,” Stone said. 

Tahsin says the ticket wants to re-zone DPS officers, expand the hours of operation for the Disability Access to Road Transportation program, create an accessibility toolkit to help organizations plan events that are accessible to all students and ensure student representation in administrative decision-making.

Maxwell Brandon & Grayson Adler

As the only candidates without prior experience working in USG, juniors Maxwell Brandon and Grayson Adler view themselves as outsiders fighting for change.

“People in [USG] Senate run for president, people already involved in USG keep running to get in, and nothing seems to be changing,” Adler said. “It’s coming from the outside [that] really allows us to come from a student point of view.”

Adler and Brandon are write-in candidates who announced their candidacy on Jan. 24. As members of the USC chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, Brandon, a junior majoring in business administration and accounting, and Adler, a junior majoring in journalism, met at the campus speaker event that hosted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro last October. 

Both candidates have deep roots at USC — Brandon and Adler are  third- and second- generation Trojans, respectively — to which they credit their familiarity with USC’s culture. 

“Lately, I feel like things have kind of been tarnished,” Brandon said. “People have a lot of complaints with the school, and USC has such a great tradition of winning in all facets of the past.”

One such tradition they hope to revive is tailgating on Greek Row, which Brandon claims is “one of our main priorities.”

“We recognize the value of the traditions we have here at USC and when Greek life is threatened, we feel that USC tradition is threatened,” Brandon said.

Brandon and Adler want to create a Commuter and Transfer Student Lounge and improve orientation for spring admits and transfer students. Other campaign goals include promoting sustainability by transitioning to solar power and biofuels, increasing access to mental health resources and improving the quality of dining hall food.

Additionally, if elected, Brandon and Adler plan to donate their monthly salaries to a cause of students’ choice. 

Through these initiatives, they hope to help reignite students’ pride in their university. 

“There’s still a lot of great things about this school, but there’s this cloud now,” Brandon said. “We want to get that out of the way and make people proud again to call themselves a Trojan.”