By Menachem Wecker
After securing spots in their respective runoff Student Association elections last week, John Richardson, a sophomore from Brunswick, Maine, won 50.6 percent of the vote to become the new president, and Ted Costigan, a junior from Reading, Mass., won 53.7 percent of the vote to become the next executive vice president.
George Washington Today caught up with the president-elect and the executive vice president-elect and asked them about their SA priorities and their favorite places to eat on campus.
GW Today: What are some of your top priorities that you hope to accomplish during your presidency and executive vice presidency?
John Richardson: The clear answer starts with my platform from the campaign – making sure GW better prepares students for the work world and gives them a better opportunity to meet with potential employers by improving on-campus recruiting, as well as making sure the cost of attendance does not rise from the time you start as a student here until you graduate.
I’m very excited to change the way the executive office interacts with students by creating the office of student outreach, which will help multiply my efforts to be at events and sit down with students and student organizations – the change being that the SA will make the first step to meet with students instead of sitting in an office on the fourth floor of the Marvin Center.
Short term, my goal is to put together the best team possible of highly motivated and dedicated individuals, who represent as diverse a group as I can get. I want to avoid group think, and the key is to select students who represent all different kinds of groups on campus.
To sum everything up: I can’t promise anything except that I’ll be working hard for students from now until the end of my term next year.
Ted Costigan: I would like to reduce printing costs for students. Nine cents is above cost for printing black-and-white pages. I think we need to look at the reasons why the libraries on campus have had to raise printing from free to nine cents a page. This goes into another priority, that we need to – for the first time in six years – give the library an operational budget increase. GW should not be cutting subscriptions to academic journals. We have had to do that for the past two years due to a lacking library budget.
I have also started conversations with our naval ROTC students about the recognition of a naval science minor. I believe that we need to acknowledge the hard work of our future naval officers.
GW Today: Why did you choose to come to GW?
Ted Costigan: I have always been really interested in politics and media. I thought that GW, and more specifically the School of Media and Public Affairs, was a perfect fit for me. I love being at the center of politics.
John Richardson: Coming from a small town like Brunswick, I really wanted to see what it was like to live in a city. With my grandparents living right here in D.C., GW automatically went to the top of my list. My grandmother has me take her out to brunch every Sunday, so I’ve never felt that far from home.
GW is clearly a great school, so the mix of having family right here while studying business in a city with every major industry represented, and on top of that, we’re right down the street from the White House – the decision wasn’t very hard.
GW Today: Which GW course or professor has been your favorite, and why?
John Richardson: Globalization and the Media, through SMPA. It’s a short-term study abroad program taught by Lee Huebner. He is a really interesting and dynamic professor. Add being in Paris for spring break, and it’s the best three credits I’ve ever taken.
Ted Costigan: Robert Stoker has had a huge impact on how I view the world. His course, Work, Welfare and Poverty, taught me how the American tax and social systems work. I learned the facts about American social programs, which are so often misrepresented in public discourse. I am so grateful for Professor Stoker’s class. Because of him I openly and unabashedly challenge those who stigmatize our poorest members of society.
GW Today: What’s your favorite place to eat on or around campus?
Ted Costigan: Foggy Bottom Grocery (FoBoGro).
John Richardson: Himalayan Heritage, I love Indian and South Asian food, plus Himalayan Heritage delivers on campusfood.com.
GW Today: What has been your favorite GW Today story?
Ted Costigan: GW’s Dead Poets Society about David Alan Grier’s class, which was one of my most memorable here at GW.
John Richardson: A Dream Come True. I saw this story in both GW Today and the Hatchet last week, and I think this is a really great program.
The university has the ability to positively affect the D.C. area, and I think the Trachtenberg Scholarship Awards are just another representation of that.
Obviously, GW students come from all over the country, but to give students with a uniquely D.C. perspective a chance to come here really adds to the diversity of perspective that makes our campus a place that’s fun to live and go to school at.