Sydney Haworth and Gracie Walls are running against Sadia Khatri and Rai Singh for president and vice president, respectively. Photos by Natalie Goo.
Left: Walls and Haworth, both sophomores, are campaigning on a platform of transparency, passion and results.
Right: Khatri and Singh, both juniors, are campaigning on a platform of sincerity and sensibility.
MAXWELL COLLINS | STAFF REPORTER | mcollins1@butler.edu
The presidential candidates for Student Government Association (SGA) began campaigning Feb. 24, advertising their candidacy for the 2024-25 academic year. Both sets of candidates have extensive experience in various communities and committees around campus, hoping to bring unique perspectives into the elected roles.
Sydney Haworth and Gracie Walls
Sydney Haworth and Gracie Walls announced their candidacy for SGA president and vice president, respectively, by creating signs and launching their campaign on Instagram. Presidential candidate Sydney Haworth is a sophomore speech, language and hearing sciences major and is currently the SGA appropriations chair in the legislative branch and the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) director for her sorority, Delta Gamma. Both roles have lent a unique perspective to Haworth and have greatly influenced her campaign goals.
As the DEI director for Delta Gamma, Haworth has smaller tasks like making sure all house members are attending DEI events and organizing events; her biggest role comes into play during recruitment.
“I’ve really gotten a chance to learn a lot about myself through that [DEI director role],” Haworth said. “I challenge my sisters by [saying], ‘Let’s hold ourselves accountable.’ [I] have [made] some great relationships with [Randall Ojeda] at the [Efroymson Diversity Center] which has been super amazing.”
Vice presidential candidate Gracie Walls is a sophomore biology major and SGA’s current university life chair in the legislative branch. Walls is also a Morton-Finney Scholar, a scholarship awarded to students who strive for a diverse and equitable campus. Walls shared that her experiences in these positions have opened her eyes to the campus in a way she might not have otherwise.
“[SGA] and [its] community has really opened my eyes to a lot of problems that I didn’t see beforehand and a lot of entities I didn’t know beforehand, and it’s just given me really great opportunities,” Walls said.
Walls has held multiple offices in SGA in her time at Butler. Before being the current university life chair, Walls served as the executive secretary in her first year.
“I got to work with the former president, [and] it was really an incredibly rewarding experience,” Walls said. “When you’re in the cabinet, a lot of the time, directors have one goal, but for me, I [loved] to have my hand in every single thing that they’re doing.”
Haworth and Walls’ campaign stands on three core pillars: transparency, passion and results. Haworth explained one strategy she and Walls would implement to make SGA’s inner workings more relevant and accessible to the student body.
“I feel there is a bit of a stigma that people don’t really understand what goes on with SGA, and we’re just looking to completely wipe that out,” Haworth said. “One of the ways that we want to do that is by creating an SGA guide: everything you need to know, every position, how it works. Anytime that anyone has questions, it’ll be accessible in the SGA office and other offices across campus.”
Even though the vice president position handles more of the funding processes, Walls still aims to create transparency.
“One thing that I’m really passionate about is just defining that line between who gets money from SGA [and] who gets money from [University Program Council or Diversity Program Council],” Walls said. “Defining that [line] better will decrease that stigma around SGA and help people understand that we really do have the best intentions, but sometimes things are out of our power.”
Haworth and Walls are passionate that they are the right people for the job, in part due to their dedication.
“This isn’t just a position for us,” Haworth said. “It’s us advocating for students. It’s us being there 100% of the time and giving it our 100% effort.”
While transparency, accessibility and dedication are motivators in candidacy, Haworth and Walls plan to bring results.
“We really want people to see what we’re doing consistently throughout the semester,” Haworth said. “I think our whole thing is to amplify the spaces that we have on campus. [We have] so many great things on campus.”
“We are an entity to help students,” Walls said. “My entire job is just helping and hearing you and doing everything I can to make what you dream to be real on campus.”
Keep up to date with the Haworth-Walls campaign on Instagram: @sydney_gracie_sga.
Sadia Khatri and Rai Singh
Sadia Khatri and Rai Singh are also in the running for SGA president and vice president, respectively. Khatri is a junior healthcare and business major, with involvement on campus ranging from her role as the current president of Diversity Program Council to her former position as opinion columnist for The Butler Collegian, which she recently resigned from to begin campaigning as it would be a conflict of interest. Singh is a junior public health major and the current president of Students of Color Allied in Healthcare. Khatri has served in SGA senate since her sophomore year and is currently the chair of diversity, equity and student belonging. Singh served on SGA in the 2021-22 academic year as the commuter senator. Both are Morton-Finney Scholars and have held various leadership roles within student organizations affiliated with the Diversity Center.
The Khatri-Singh campaign is emphasizing ideas of sincerity and sensibility, which Khatri said stems from a notion that students perceive SGA as being very bureaucratic and serious, which they want to change.
“While [SGA being serious is] true, we’d like for it to be sincere,” Khatri said. “We like for students to think of SGA as a resource that they can go to that isn’t scary or apathetic, but is sincere, and it’s a place where they can go for genuine assistance.”
In terms of sensibility, the Khatri-Singh campaign hopes to provide students with a resource that appeals to them and meets them where they are.
“We want SGA to come to students,” Khatri said. “We do not need students seeking out resources. We want them to know where they can go when they need to.”
Khatri and Singh’s past and present experiences in communities across campus lend them a unique environment to practice and develop their leadership skills.
“The way that we’ve interacted especially with organizations in the Diversity Center and non-SGA parts of campus has really impacted our drive and how we want to see all of campus more integrated,” Khatri said.
The Khatri-Singh campaign wants to help generate a better understanding of SGA across campus so that the student body knows how SGA can help them and their experience on campus.
“One thing we want to implement in SGA would be town halls,” Singh said. “[The goal] of [holding] town halls is to [give everybody] on campus an opportunity to express any concerns, anything that is positively improving, anything that needs more work. We are the voice of the people, so we want to connect with the people.”
Khatri and Singh want to make information about how to request grants readily available to the student body. One way the pair hopes to implement this is through conversations with treasurers of student organizations at Butler.
“[I am] hoping to implement a semester requirement for all treasurers on campus to meet with me to talk about the grant writing process and any issues these organizations have in terms of requesting funds from SGA,” Singh said. “We have so many resources for our student organizations. [We want] to increase communication and increase education on what SGA has to offer.”
The Khatri-Singh campaign wants to take steps to bring DEI initiatives to the forefront of campus life. One way they are looking to do this is by taking events that occur in and are sponsored by the Diversity Center and amplifying them to connect with more students. They believe that holding the president and vice president titles will make a strong impact on campus for students that go underrepresented.
“An aspect of [our campaign] is seeing who is in [these] positions of power and authority, and helping students understand that students like [Singh and I] have a place in leadership and are able to make it, even if we are at a predominantly white university,” Khatri said. “It is important in that aspect of representation.”
Keep up to date with the Khatri-Singh campaign on Instagram: @khatrisinghforsga.
Election day for the 2024-25 presidential election is on Tuesday, March 5.
