USG candidates campaign ahead of polls closing

Colorful yard signs litter the bright green grass on the Trousdale median, marking the start of the Undergraduate Student Government election season. Yet, this is only one of the many ways that candidates have taken up campaigning, with many using digital platforms such as Instagram, shouting through bullhorns and tabling stands to answer questions from passersby.

Aidan Feighery, one of this year’s senatorial candidates, said that adapting to the student population’s online presence would be key to running a successful campaign. 

“I think that the pandemic encouraged us to engage online, and I think that the remnants of that are still here,” Feighery said. “There’s still some degree of ‘Stay inside and reduce outdoor interactions’ that I think has really resonated throughout campus.”

From social media to in-person campaigning, candidates used varying methods to reach different parts of the students body. Senatorial candidates Devin Ayala and Navya Singh said that they reached out to approximately 20 student organizations on campus.

“We definitely hit a … variety of them, from sororities to underrepresented assemblies,” Singh said. 

Despite the popularity of online platforms, Ayala and Singh said that they spent significant time campaigning in person, handing out campaign pins, flowers and other goodies on Trousdale, Leavey Library and McCarthy Quad with volunteers’ help. The pair also listened to students’ concerns in front of Leavey Library and said they handed out around 60 doughnuts in one day.

According to Ayala, one of the main reasons to go the in-person route was to reach entirely new audiences and escape the echo chambers of social media.

“[On] Instagram, people [who] are gonna follow you are your friends, whereas people on Trousdale or Leavey Library or McCarthy Quad are random people you have not encountered,” Ayala said.

Despite efforts to campaign in-person, interviews conducted by the Daily Trojan confirmed that many candidates opted to use social media to reach students.

“The common thread among everyone’s campaigns has really been the focus on Instagram, which I think is largely due to just the fact that it’s easy to push posts there,” Feighery said. “There’s a strong culture of using Instagram at USC.”

Candidates employed Instagram in different ways, from live streams to Q&A sessions and student voice segments, where students get to voice their support or concerns. Feighery said that knowing how to utilize the app’s features to best reach his audience was important to his campaign, and said that he used graphic design apps, such as Canva, to bolster his social media appearance. 

Ayala and Singh said that one of their Instagram strategies involved handing their account over to students to highlight multiple perspectives.

“We really wanted to give students a voice, so we asked a lot of people, ‘Hey, what’s one reason why you would vote for Devin and Navya?’” Ayala said. “We gave them our platform. We gave them our suggestion box, and they sent in videos … We call it a ‘Why Us’ segment.”

Rishi Malay, a freshman majoring in economics and global studies, said he got information about elections primarily from social media. 

“A lot of the time, it’s just follow requests from Instagram accounts, and then, occasionally, people reposting stories,” Malay said. “[Instagram is] the main method of engagement.”

USG attempted to combat low voter turnout — an issue of prevalence for the last several years —  by increasing the ease of voting online and even providing voters with free In-N-Out in 2020.

For his own campaign, Feighery used new mediums to reach out to underrepresented groups in an effort to address low voter turnout.

“I’ve been engaging with [Chinese Students and Scholars Association] in order to push information on WeChat, which is a platform that affects the Chinese and international student community, but doesn’t affect a lot of the more overrepresented groups at USC,” Feighery said. “Platforms like WeChat really represent where populations at USC as voters have been passed over.”

Undergraduate students can vote online at usg.usc.edu/elections/ or in person until midnight Friday.