David Bruen should end his campaign for reelection

Recently, the incumbent Student Association president David Bruen was the first to announce his intention to run for reelection. Many Syracuse University students probably also had his “campaign account” try to follow them on Instagram. While I am not entirely surprised, I am disappointed because I believe that he is morally obligated to end his campaign and not seek reelection.

The chief reason for my opposition is Bruen’s use of the student body’s lack of attention to our student government to transform internal structures of SA. He is doing this in ways that now make it much harder for anyone outside of his circle to retain influence. He played a high-level role in the creation of the new constitution and originally ran unopposed. Now that he has served a term and reformed the SA in some way, he is obligated to step down.

Relatively few people know that by the end of Bruen’s freshman year, he ran the student government’s infrastructure for elections, with all questions or complaints running through him. In his sophomore year, he took an even higher office as the Speaker of the House, where he gained influence over the majority of members in the SA. SU has seen disputed elections in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, the latter of which two candidates opposed Hastings and Golden in the campaign that Bruen chaired. Bruen, however, ran unopposed in the spring of 2021, which strikes me as strange after multiple straight years of contested elections.

This new election occurred under the new rules that were recently rewritten in the new constitution. He struggled significantly to get the necessary number of votes to legitimately win the election, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. In the event that there weren’t enough votes, constitutionally, the presidency would have been handed to … the Speaker of the House. Bruen certainly was not the only person organizing the new constitution, but his primary role puts the intentions behind his subsequent actions in doubt.

While Bruen’s campaign messaging was full of vague platitudes about “fighting for us,” his actions as the president were far from what he promised. As a student, I have seen no change in my experience because of any of Bruen’s work.

Bruen’s intentions with his position seem far more self-serving than anything else. One of the few times that I can remember him talking about his specific work has been the petition he signed about student loan debt. While a letter like that is not bad, his emphasis on this makes it seem that his time in SA has been primarily a means to advance his career. There is nothing implicitly wrong with the policy itself, but his choice to list this as one of his main accomplishments shows how little change he has brought to our campus.

My point is not to come across as angry or jealous, because I think that Bruen is a hard worker and a smart person. The reality is that the students at SU need someone who is willing to raise hell for students, even when having to go against the administration. Students feel constantly betrayed and disenfranchised by decisions made by the bureaucrats running our school, and we need representation that reflects that.

The larger point to why he should not run for reelection is because his term as president should have been transitional — moving into a new constitution and change for the SA. Even if he had lived up to his promise to fight for students, he should now be allowing a more energized group of young students to take his role. From the very beginning of his time at SU, Bruen has been an insider within SA and a friend to the administration, a major reason why many students are so frustrated. Any real change now needs an outsider.

That’s why I was so excited to hear about Maram Ahmed and Zikora Lotachukwu Nnam’s announcement of their campaign. They are hard-working STEM students who have witnessed the ineptitude of the administration as resident advisers. They participate wholly and enthusiastically in our thriving student culture, representing a new and exciting future for SU. Representatives who have the strength and determination to demand change is what the students need. I am excited to see the future that Maram and Zikora will bring to SU.

Patrick Fox, Syracuse University class of 2022