By Laraib Asim
In the early morning of April 12, Ahmed Metwaly, the president of the Student Association, dropped out of the elections for the 60th Legislation’s presidential elections. The report in the executive council meeting minutes stated Ahmed’s announcement, “I am no longer running for reelection, this will be my last semester. I dropped out yesterday.”
He was unable to provide an official resignation to the Student Association as well. During the Zoom meeting, he talked about the difficulties of maintaining a healthy work-life balance as a rising junior.
“I enjoy it a lot, but the highs are very high and the lows are very low. It’s not an easy job,” Metwaly said.
In the fall 2022 semester, he will be in his senior year of college. As a management information systems major with a cumulative GPA of 3.5, he plans on maintaining a heavier workload than ever before with three-hour night classes.
“I’ve had to face the fact that maybe I can’t do everything,” he said.
“The fact that we are the first SUNY school to have that [Black Solidarity Day] on our academic calendar is something that I take a lot of pride in,” Metwaly said about the highlights of the 59th Legislation.
The presidential election campaign, which involved Taiba Azeem and Robert Henn running for the role of the Student Association’s president, allowed Metwaly to comfortably resign. Compared to last year’s elections where he was the sole applicant for the presidential position, Metwaly is confident that an enthusiastic candidate can lead the Student Association and can continue to make remarkable progress in the upcoming legislations.
The pandemic had caused a lot of the on-campus student clubs and associations to die down and while COVID-19 is still actively being fought against, student life is resuming at full scale once more. The number of clubs is steadily increasing and new clubs are being approved. For example, the Dungeoneers Guild club just got approved March 30.
“With the measures that my legislation has taken and [with] the things that we continue to work on in this final stretch, I think that the SA will head for more involvement, more representation and being better than what we were before the pandemic as well. I think it’s going to be an upward trend from here.” Metwaly said.
He hopes the 59th Legislature will be used as a base to continue forward with, especially since students who are campaigning for seats in different positions in the next semester are already familiar with how the association works.
