“I understand what type of impact and effects a president could have,” Carlos Porter said.
He said he wants to ensure that whoever takes this position is someone that is qualified and understands the role very well.
One of Porter’s plans for ensuring that he will be an impactful president is being accessible to all students.
“One thing I don’t see this administration doing, nor did I see the 89th administration doing is visiting all campuses,” he said.
He wants students to know who their SGA officials are by face and to be able to reach out to them.
“We speak for the students, so whether the students know it or not, they are all part of SGA,” Porter said. “Many students do not know who their SGA officials are, and that’s something a lot of campuses have issues with.”
He joined SGA in 2018 as a senator for Academic Affairs before becoming the speaker of the Newton campus in spring 2019.
Porter is a business major, and he believes he can do just as much as a political science major.
“My father is a business owner, and I have helped him sell supplies. He is in a management role. All my life I have grown up in the business world,” Porter said. “I understand what it is like to manage other people.”
He said the help from his father, and his role as speaker of the Newton campus, has prepared him for the position as SGA president.
Porter’s platform consists of three things he finds most important to contribute to the Georgia State campus: unity, accountability and security.
“We have to bring SGA together because that is the voice for the students,” Porter said. “If the voice is not together then how can the students be heard?”
Porter plans to have every senator and SGA official held accountable for their actions.
He wants to market the SGA university-wide meetings to allow for a larger student presence.
According to Porter, if more students are there, then senators will watch how they act and what they say during those meetings.
His final plan of action is security. Porter plans on boosting the amount of security that is available on each campus and ensuring that all cameras, inside and outside, are operating.
SGA is currently Porter’s only focus because he said it needs to be taken seriously.
He did have a message he wanted students to know before deciding their next SGA president.
“What I want to say to students is if you don’t just want a different person in office, if you want a change of mindset, I know I have the mindset of ‘students first.’ I have had this mindset from the time I was a senator to now, [as] speaker of the [Newton] Senate,” Porter said. “Normal presidencies are just a change of person, but what I want to bring is a change of mindset.”
