Following a heated campaign season, BCSG Presidents-Elect opened up in an interview conducted almost two weeks after their win. Mohammad Zayd ‘27 and Ava Steinberger ‘27 joined me for lunch on April 7 to talk about themselves, their campaign, and their goals for their presidency.
Zayd is a junior majoring in neuroscience with a double minor in physics and chemistry on the pre med track. While he has “a lot of STEM stuff going on,” he added that he works as an admissions coordinator, a tutor in the student economic support center and a research assistant in the neuroscience department. Beyond that, he is “the current co-president and next year’s co-president of Student Government, the South Asian Student Association, the Muslim Student Association, the Robinson Players, which is our Bates Theater and Dance Crew, or WRBC, our Bates College radio show.”
Steinberger is a junior philosophy major with a current concentration in Film and Media Studies. Aside from working as a teaching assistant, “I’ve been a member of the women’s tennis team since my freshman year. I’ve also been a Class Rep since my freshman year, and I also serve as Bates Votes co-coordinator,” Steinberger said. She served as an ambassador last year for the presidential election, and will be co-coordinator for the midterm elections this year.
When asked how they keep track of so many commitments, Zayd said, “Google Calendar is always being used. Ava and I, when we were figuring out campaign stuff, had a little trouble trying to find time for each other because we were both busy doing so much.” He continued, “I don’t consider it busy work, because it’s stuff that I really enjoy. It’s stuff that I am passionate about.”
When asked about how the pair decided to run together, Steinberger explained, “I was still planning on running for [class] rep, but Mo had approached me and asked if I was potentially interested in running. That really piqued my interest because I’ve seen the really great work that Mo has done as co-president, and I think that he’s done a great job and is a very effective leader, and getting the opportunity to work with him… would be really nice.”
Steinberger, on the pair’s campaign strategy, expressed that her experience running a campaign was very helpful in doing it again this year.
“I think that we understood the importance of social media to some extent, but I think the main thing that helped us was just having a lot of face time,” a priority of theirs became “making sure that students know that we care to talk to them and so they feel heard just as much as we want to feel heard,” Steinberger said.
“Us having run a campaign already, we both kind of knew what works, what doesn’t, what were some strengths and weaknesses. So especially this campaign, I think we emphasized a lot on just getting people to vote,” Zayd added.
When asked about moments of uncertainty, Zayd mentioned their opponents’, Miles Schmidt ‘27 and Salem Aqraa ‘27, unconventional campaign and endorsements from community establishments like the Blue Goose Tavern, The Cage, and Kim’s Kitchen.
“To our opponents’ credit, I think they had a very unconventional campaign, which was where maybe some of the…worry came from. Like [the] unprecedented endorsements and stylistic approach with their campaign in general. So we couldn’t really predict in the same way where voters’ interests lie, like we could in the past years,” Steinberger said.
“There were points where I was nervous about that,” Zayd agreed, “but I think ultimately I trusted the Bates students to make the right choice and be informed voters.”
On current BCSG happenings and looking to the future, Zayd explained, “the current administration is flushing out a proper transition plan, because one thing that I noticed coming into Student Government with Zach last year is that the transition plan wasn’t really robust.”
“We’re just gonna talk about how this year went, [and] reflect and how we want next year to go. So it’s really just figuring out that transition plan now. Coming up shortly, though, is when we will start planning out our agenda for the upcoming year,” Zayd said.
