Last week, American International College’s Student Government Association selected the nominees for next year’s Student Body President in what is sure to be an interesting race.

Current Student Body President, Dante Raggio, is outgoing due to graduation. He served one year as president and the two nominees to replace him currently serve on his executive board.

The first nomination for the head of SGA is President Raggio’s current Vice President, Jonathan Murray. Vice President Murray is currently a junior. He is an Occupational Therapy major, plays soccer at AIC, served one year on the executive board as VP, and served as Sophomore Class President the year before that.

Murray ran the student body open forum a few weeks ago, which allowed students to voice their concerns over on-campus living, the shuttle service, as well as the quality of food at the dining commons.

Taylor Campos is the other nomination. She is the current Secretary of the student body, having served on the executive board for one-year under President Raggio. She was a part of Student Government the year before that as well, serving as the Health Science representative. She is a Nursing major and plays on the soccer team as well.

As Student Body Secretary, Campos presented the agendas for all Senate meetings and had an amendment passed on the SGA Constitution, which formally gave the Secretary the right to speak at Senate meetings.

She also created the new SGA welcome packet in an effort to increase interest in SGA to try and gain more members. Campos also played a role in the shuttle complaint form on the AIC engage website and has helped start the Dining Commons committee which will hopefully increase the quality of the food at AIC.

Murray and Campos were not the only two members to be nominated on the night. Federica Frew, Jayda Gilmore, and myself were all nominated as well. Frew and I both declined the nominations for personal reasons.

Gilmore accepted her nomination but did not receive the 50 percent support from Student Body Senate to formally run for the position. The announcement did come as a shock to many.

It will be interesting to see what happens now. Murray and Campos are longtime friends. They are in the same grade, both are Health Science majors, both play soccer, both are from Connecticut, both joined SGA at the same time, served on the executive board together, have many mutual friends, and were even in the same orientation group as freshmen.

Running for Student Body President is a serious position – there is scholarship money on the line, but so is their friendship. The two could each run a campaign and see who wins, they could not campaign at all and just see who wins, or one of them could just drop and accept a lower-level executive board position and avoid any potential altercations.

We’ll know what option they choose in the coming days, as the signatures from constituents were due on March 23, and campaigning – if necessary – will begin shortly after.