By Bill Shaner, News Staff

Both Student Government Association (SGA) Presidential Candidate Amanda Sabia and current Vice President for Student Affairs Derek Miller have declined to seek a position on next year’s SGA executive board after President Ryan Fox’s re-election Thursday.

Miller, who supported Sabia for president, said minutes after the election result was announced he would not seek a position. He said part of the reason he did not seek re-election was his working relationship with Fox.

“I hope [Fox] exceeds my expectations, and I wish him the best, but I have better things to do with my senior year than argue with power-hungry nerds,” he wrote in an e-mail to The News.

Fox won the election by a vote of 1801 votes for himself, 1704 votes for Sabia and 371 votes of no confidence, and said he was excited to serve another year.

“I’m excited for another year,” he said. “I’m excited to have another opportunity to finish off things we started this year that we knew were going to take longer than a year.”

Miller said Sabia would do a better job as SGA’s president. He said that while Fox was good at accomplishing small projects, he will “accomplish little in terms of actual major policy changes that the campus cares about.” Sabia, he said, also has a truer conscience, and although Fox may be more organized and better at delegation, “you can’t delegate conscience.”

“Amanda has always supported what the majority of students want, and in my eyes, that’s what counts,” he said.

At the senate meeting Thursday, Sabia accepted a nomination for executive vice president but withdrew earlier this week. Instead, Sabia was elected to executive vice president of Northeastern’s National Panhellenic Conference chapter.

“I am a firm believer that when one door closes another door opens and I’m excited to get involved with leadership throughout campus that I wouldn’t have been able to get involved with in the past four years of my career with SGA,” she said.

She also said her decision was not motivated by the presidential campaign or the state of SGA, but rather a “more optimistic decision.”

“There are other things to explore at this university and and there’s a lot of great things that can be awesome opportunities,” she said.

But, Sabia said she ran a “cleaner and more constructive campaign” than Fox. She said Fox often took credit for things he did not do, including a more-clocks-in-classrooms initiative that Sabia organized as head of the Academic Affairs Committee. In general, she said, Fox was quick to tout projects spearheaded by vice presidents, not himself.

“Though his slogan of ‘Taking action and getting results’ is great and and all buzz-word like, he has take action and taken credit for a lot of the results,” she said.

She also noted Fox’s handling of spray chalk paint during the campaign. She said an administrator told her she could not use the chalk paint, and when Sabia asked Fox to remove his paint from campus, she said he responded with, “I don’t care what you think is fair.”

Fox said he was alerted by the administration after his campaign had done its painting and said the paint will wash away in time.

As far as the election goes, some students interviewed by The News said they felt Fox did a better job campaigning.

“He had more legit posters and advertising,” said Tori Reilly, a sophomore criminal justice major. “[Sabia’s] was just chalk, he had flyers and stuff.”

She said that a flyer containing information on what Fox achieved as president this year won her vote.

Others said they felt Fox’s use of a golf cart during the last few days of campaigning was a nice touch.

“He came and picked me up on that golf cart and brought me to class,” said Alf Carrol, a sophomore biology major who voted for Fox.

But most students interviewed said they were unsure of what SGA does. Most said they were sure SGA did good work, but were unsure what that work entailed. Neil Fitzgerald, a middler psychology major, did not vote because he didn’t see incentive to.

“I also feel like I don’t notice when they do things for us,” he continued. “Like I’m sure they do a lot but I don’t really notice.”

SGA will internally elect the rest of its executive board tonight at 7 p.m. in the Raytheon Amphitheater.

Parts of this article previously appeared in an article on HuntNewsNU.com Thursday April 8.