Shihab Moral

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) held its elections this past weekend for next year’s president and vice president positions. Eisa Rafat ’25 won the presidency with 56.94 percent of the vote, and Elliott Ewell ’27 won the vice presidency with 59.09 percent of the vote. Both winners are currently members of BSG. Rafat currently serves as a Residential Life (ResLife) Representative, and Ewell is a member of the Facilities and Sustainability Committee.

In their campaign platforms, both Rafat and Ewell prioritized making BSG more accessible to the student body, as well as reinstituting a shuttle service between Bowdoin and the Portland Jetport during breaks. Rafat notes that this service existed for several years until the pandemic disrupted the service and hopes it can be quickly reinstated.

“[The shuttle service] is one of the big things I’m hoping to work on,” Rafat said. “I’ve already started working with some of the people who would be involved in that conversation to try to get some background on how we can implement it and what it looked like in the past, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here and just build off of those structures.”

Rafat wants to increase the frequency and manner of BSG interactions with students. In practice, this could look like hosting programming in campus spaces like dining halls, continuing to post meeting minutes online or using social media to keep the Bowdoin community informed on BSG initiatives.

“This doesn’t [just] include trying to get people to come to meetings, which is important, but we want it so that naturally, people are then drawn to meetings as a result of these interactions,” Rafat said.

Additionally, Rafat hopes to build on his previous experiences of working with several student groups on campus, which alongside ResLife include the Bowdoin Outing Club, the Center for Multicultural Life, the Muslim Student Alliance  and Students for Justice in Palestine. He hopes to increase BSG’s collaboration with ResLife.

“I think there’s a lot of really good work that BSG can do in collaboration with ResLife that hasn’t necessarily been discovered yet,” Rafat said. “I’m excited to see how ResLife can support BSG and how BSG can support ResLife moving forward.”

As vice president, Ewell also hopes to foster stronger relations with the student body, more specifically by using BSG’s budget in a way that serves all students.

“We support services with money that people don’t use, and we’re spending money on services that lots of people want to use and balancing that out to make sure that every single dollar is getting spent on something that someone’s going to use is important,” Ewell said.

Ewell will also be responsible for running BSG meetings. He wants to improve the way meetings are run and increase community within BSG, including through name games and competitions.

“We don’t know each other’s names as much, like there’s not that kind of bond you get with another sort of club, which I think we probably should actively encourage by making those meetings more efficient and more fun,” Ewell said.

Rafat and Ewell will take their new positions during the penultimate assembly meeting in April, but a rigorous training process is already underway. As part of the training, Rafat and Ewell will begin running assembly meetings and become familiar with specifics concerning BSG services and budget. Current BSG President Paul Wang ’24 notes that the transition in leadership is easier as both winners are already part of BSG.

“I think it’s super helpful that Elliott and Eisa have both been really involved with BSG this year and a lot of our crucial initiatives,” Wang said. “I think having them in really key focal points of the organization already will really help facilitate their transition.”

This year, BSG split the elections into two weeks, meaning that elections for executive board and class council positions will be held this weekend. There were 792 votes cast in the elections for president and vice president, marking a slight decrease from last year’s 889 votes for all executive positions. This year’s voting turnout was still significantly higher than the 337 votes cast in 2022.

Wang believes that, while this slight decrease could be attributed to confounding factors such as the changing of the elections’ timing, the high voter turnout was overall a strong sign of community engagement with BSG.

Looking to the future, Wang says he is excited about next year’s leadership team and believes Rafat and Ewell will help continue the progress BSG has made regarding both its internal operations and its relationship with the broader Bowdoin community.

“I’m really grateful that they’re really adamant about continuing that work as well as branching out more to campus,” Wang said. “I think the opportunity set is still huge, and I think this is the perfect group to accomplish that.”