NEWS

Ayden Maher looks tired, almost worn out. He has been in and out of meetings all day — first with Dean of Students Corey King, then he met with Florida International University’s student body president, and after that he still had to figure out how to spend the last $36,000 from last year’s budget.

He has had practically no vacations. On May 11, roughly a week after classes for the spring semester — and his first term as SG president — had ended, he was raising his right hand to get sworn in for a second term.

Unlike the first time around, when he won the presidency after a swift run-off election, this time the battle for the top student leadership spot dragged on for almost two months and involved several election board meetings, a student court hearing and accusations of bribery over which Maher might get sued.

In the end, his contender for the run-off election withdrew and Maher became the second person in FAU’s history to serve two consecutive terms as student body president.

The UP talked to the re-elected president about that and his plans for the future.

Here’s what he had to say.

UP: Do you feel that you’ve lived up to your campaign promises and done everything you set out to do for your first term?

Maher: We didn’t accomplish everything that we said we would do because you run into a lot of roadblocks working at the university. There were some projects that were not accomplishable, whether it’s financially — or, for example, hammocks, there were so many safety issues that the university was concerned about people falling out of the hammocks that we couldn’t get that done. But we tried, and that’s what matters, going and trying to do what you said and trying every avenue to accomplish the goal that you set out to do.

UP: What are you most proud of? What’s your biggest accomplishment? And your biggest regret?

Maher: We really want to change the culture, help create a tradition and really show students that SG is there to care for them, and I think that’s the biggest accomplishment that we’ve had over the year. I ran again because people asked me to run again, people encouraged me to run again. We did a lot of events, we did a lot of things for the students in programming and I think that really changed what the students perceived of FAU. My biggest regret is that being student body president, you only have a year to do so many things, and luckily I’ve been granted another year to do so. I really wanted to work on hopefully getting banners on Glades Road — I did meet with the mayor so I did try to. But when you only have a year there are just so many things that you can do.

UP: What are your main duties as president as you see them?

Maher: The main role of the student body president is to be an advocate for the students and I think that I’ve done that. I’m a commuter student, I’m a first-generation student and I think I understand the needs of the students at FAU. I think that as student body president you can’t have any preference to any clubs or student organizations, to any type of person. I advocated for the creation of an LGBT resource center and we got it. Even if I were to disagree with the LGBT community, which I do not, I think that you need to put yourself aside and make sure that you are advocating for everyone that’s a student.

UP: How’s the Ayden from the second term going to compare to the Ayden from the first term?

Maher: After going through a year of anything you learn to listen more, you learn to not make decisions off the cuff, you learn to respect people more, you learn to check your ego and you learn that our time is short, not just on the university or any position but on earth, and I think that you learn to appreciate what you have and you really work harder to make sure that you have an impact on your world. I’ve learned not to take anything for granted and I’ve learned to push myself as much as I can to accomplish something. I think I was pulled in a lot of directions my first year and I did really focus on just the health of Student Government and the health of doing long-term projects that live on past my term here, and that what it’s about — leaving something that students can have for years to come. I hope to do more of those projects instead of using funds just for T-shirts or giveaways.

UP: What are your commitments and priorities going into your second term?

Maher: We already have a lot of things that we are doing right now, although it’s still the end of my fiscal year for the first term. So we have new bike parking lots on campus and we are also encouraging students to use bikes to and from their class; it’s environmentally friendly and it eases us on the parking issue. We are bringing a statue on campus which will be in conjunction with our 50th anniversary. We are trying to revive a time-capsule project from three years ago since we are having our 50th anniversary; we’ll put mementos from FAU from this point in time and after 25 years it’ll be cool to come back and see something that you wrote or a project that I worked on. We are so young and I think it’s important this term to create tradition and stuff that we can leave a legacy by. We also hope to get a new outdoor study space, where students can have events, shaded, where students would want to be outside; we have a beautiful campus but we don’t take advantage of it, so we would like to create a park, some sort of SG-sponsored park where students can come and enjoy, where there’s activities going on. We have a lot of Union renovation and one of my main objectives is unifying Student Government — we need to break down ‘we are the Boca Raton campus’ or ‘we are the Jupiter campus. ‘ We are one FAU; although we are separated by distance we all are part of one big organization.

UP: Do you have any legislation lined up to send to the Senate for consideration?

Maher: Currently right now, no.

UP: During most part of your first term you supported the 15-percent tuition increase. When elections time was around the corner you said you were against it. Why did you change your mind?

Maher: I supported the increase last year because we have one of the cheapest tuitions in the nation, I believe, and when we have a budget shortfall there’s only one way that the university can make up for it, and that’s through student dollars. So I supported it and I thought that we needed this, otherwise we were going to have a great shortfall. We were going to lose out on stimulus dollars because they were going to run out in the federal government and then we also had a shortfall from the state legislature, so what are we going to do? Are we going to cut majors or are we going to charge more money? Seeing that we already had a cheap tuition I supported it. Now what I didn’t support was an additional increase, I want to make that clear because the state under Gov. Scott vetoed $4 million of funding to FAU for building repair. We face such hard cuts from the state that I don’t support another increase. I think we need to pressure the government to realize that higher education is not spending, it’s an investment.

UP: You didn’t win the election by the student vote, you won because Christopher Puchferran, the other presidential candidate for the run-off, conceded. How does that make you feel?

Maher: I disagree with you. I think that the students, although per the statutes it requires 50 percent plus one [of the votes to win], I do believe I received 49.7, I received the most amount of votes, I received over 1,500 votes, my opponent received over 900 and the third opponent received less than 600 votes. I received the most amount of votes, I received an overwhelming outpour of support. If it were to go to a run-off I do believe that candidates Gentry and Peterson (the ones with the lowest votes who were not part of the run-off) would have endorsed my tickets and their supporters would have supported us as well. I think that students overwhelmingly supported us. I think that the reason the Puchferran campaign conceded was a little strange, I think they should have stayed in the race and I would have loved to have won it and there be a run-off. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t win the election by the student vote, I think the students voted overwhelmingly for myself.

UP: Do you think you played dirty politics during your campaign by accusing Puchferran of bribing students for votes? Puchferran stated in his letter of resignation that your tactics were part of his decision to withdraw from the race.

Maher: I believe in what I did. I believe there are other ways that I could have handled it. I believe I could have allowed it to go to a run-off, but there’s avenues to contest the election and I believed that I had grounds for contestations. If I truly didn’t believe in my grounds for contestations I would have given up and went directly to a run-off. I feel confident that if it would have gone to a run-off election, we would have won the election. I think that it’s not dirty politics, it’s just politics, and it’s the avenues that I have to work in the election.

UP: Last, is there anything you want to say to the students as you start your second term?

Maher: I would like to thank the students for the opportunity to serve as student body president. Opportunities are endless at FAU and it’s really what you make of your college experience. FAU’s offered me so many things and opened so many doors for me and I felt like I need to give back to the university. As you go in life, especially as you go through your college experience, make the most out of it, get involved with something that you truly enjoy and appreciate. Take that in throughout your life, know that when you are involved in the community and your family it makes not only your personal life better, but the world around you a better place.