John Breitfelder & Guinevere (Gwen) O’Beacain
(Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan. Modified.)
John Breitfelder and Gwen O’Beacain want their run for president and vice president to be the “change ticket.”
“Although I’ve been in [the Undergraduate Student Government] for a year and I’ve seen a lot of good, we do feel like the org has been held back by a lot of bureaucracy for many, many years,” said Breitfelder, who was elected as a senator in the September 2024 special election. “And we want to change that by adding the entrepreneurial spirit.”
Their platform includes the creation of a verified student marketplace application they call FLEA, an idea they developed in their business classes.
“We can go start this business, but we feel really passionately for all these students,” said O’Beacain. “It’s something that USC should verify for students, because it’s a big problem we have with scamming and students get taken advantage of.”
Other priorities for the business administration students are food, including getting EBT accepted at campus dining establishments and bringing In-N-Out Burger to campus during finals week, and future, including partnering with LinkedIn and changing metrics for internal USG accountability.
“As opposed to just solely evaluating every member of USG based on their office hours,” Breitfelder said. “We want to change the [key performance indicator] from time spent in the office to what is your project success … We want to challenge everyone to do more project work and do more student-facing work.”
— Nicholas Corral
Ali Bhatti & Chichi Makasi
(Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan. Modified.)
Presidential and vice presidential candidates Ali Bhatti and Chichi Makasi organize their campaign around four topics, made up of 27 points.
With two of their priorities, “advocacy and listening” and “accountability and leveraging,” they emphasize collecting student feedback and connecting it with USC administrators.
“This is probably the best time with a change of administration, change of leadership, to really set the tone for hopefully a great next decade of USC by amplifying student voices,” said Bhatti, a current USG senator.
They also emphasized the importance of survey data to get the University to recognize the priorities of their administration.
“‘Going directly to the club meetings to get them to fill out these surveys is really the biggest thing,” Bhatti said. “When we present [administrators] these statistics that we’re really hoping to get through our initiatives, we really think there could be change around campus.”
They also said they wanted to simplify funding requirements for recognized student organizations.
“We’ve experienced, first hand, the difficulty of getting the recognition [process] and the difficulty of utilizing the budget that you have,” said Makasi, a sophomore majoring in pharmacology and drug development. “A big thing for us was working directly with those RSOs and letting them know that USG is here to work with them to streamline that process.”
Their other specific proposals include expanding USG’s laundry stipend, removing fencing around Alumni Park and attempting to partner with ChatGPT for their Edu product.
— Nicholas Corral
Mikaela Bautista & Emma Fallon
(Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan. Modified.)
With a mindset of fostering community, positivity and fun at the forefront of their campaign, Mikaela Bautista and Emma Fallon are running for USG president and vice president. Bautista is a junior majoring in business administration, while Fallon is a junior majoring in political science.
This spring admit and sophomore transfer duo is already integrated into the USG and the greater Trojan community. They plan to implement a three-phase platform for this upcoming year that they believe will “deliver things that students actually want, that are realistic and will, overall, make their undergraduate experience better.”
Bautista and Fallon hope to begin conversations around better artificial intelligence integration, more advising opportunities and hosting student programming during holiday breaks. They also intend to continue ongoing projects, such as moving USCard service to mobile wallets and increasing library hours. To maintain momentum from previous administrations, they hope to conclude a few key initiatives: expansion of finals study spaces, hosting spring admit/transfer welcome dinners and encouraging USC spirit.
“We are the ones who are pushing for these projects, but [students] should be the voice, and we should just be the microphone,” said Fallon. “[We want] to, one, foster the community within USG, but then two, also provide resources to all communities on campus so that they [can] maximize the student experience.”
According to Bautista, a major focus for the campaign is “really ensuring that the neighborhood around us feels a part of the Trojan family and that they can come to our campus to celebrate USC, to celebrate [Los Angeles] and just be a Trojan as well.”
— Ava O’Connor
Heydy Vasques & Elija Barnes
(Ethan Thai / Daily Trojan. Modified.)
Heydy Vasquez and Elija Barnes want to help their peers “become the students they want to be” as president and vice president of USG.
Their platform centralizes on supporting Registered Student Organizations, as they believe these groups “play a crucial role in helping students build community and explore their interests.” Their other goals for the term include meeting the financial needs of students, improving textbook accessibility through USC Libraries, subsidizing sexually transmitted infections testing costs and growing USG’s efforts to improve representation and diversity.
Being a part of USG since her freshman year, Vasquez, a junior majoring in legal studies. said she has “grown in the organization and really seen the way that USG can contribute in making change to student life.” She has also been a USG senator and advocacy liaison, where she established USC’s first Buddhist Prayer Room and launched the USG’s first Diversity Poll. “My genuine passion for student well-being, combined with the hands-on experience I’ve gained, makes me excited about the possibility of leading USG into a brighter future,” Vasquez noted on her campaign platform.
Barnes is a junior studying mechanical engineering and held the roles of senator and speaker of the senate during his time at USG. His central goal as vice president is to “refocus all of the work [USG does] back to uplifting students, heightening the student experience and providing a supportive collegiate environment.”
As candidates, Vasquez and Barns aim to improve the overall USC experience, and their leadership “reflects the diverse interests and aspirations of our campus community, making it a more vibrant and inclusive place for all students.”
— Daniela Mattson
Disclaimer: Heydy Vasquez is a former opinion columnist for the Daily Trojan.
Correction: A previous version of this article improperly attributed four photographs. The article was updated Feb. 14 at 2:19 p.m. to reflect the correct attributions. The Daily Trojan regrets this error.
