Romeo, Shull to vie for SGB presidency

Four more students will run for positions on Student Government Board, including another… Four more students will run for positions on Student Government Board, including another candidate for president.

Senior Justin Romeo filed papers this week to run against current board member Charlie Shull for president.

Romeo, who ran for president last year but lost, said he “had no plans to run” until he learned that there was only one candidate vying for the position.

“I thought that students really deserve a choice,” he said. “It would be a shame for there to be no dialogue.”

Romeo, an economics and political science major, said that he plans to defer law school for one year to serve as president if elected.

Shull said he was “a little taken aback” by Romeo’s decision to run for president, both because Romeo ran last year and because he signed out an application packet after the original deadline.

SGB originally advertised an Oct. 21 application deadline in The Pitt News, but accepted late candidates, who needed more signatures on their petitions to run, until early this week.

Shull said he’s “still confident in the election, because I feel I was serious about this from day one — getting a packet together, having a slate together.”

He said he hopes he’ll be an “overwhelming candidate” in the presidential election, earning at least 75 percent of the vote.

Shull said he and the other members of his slate, board candidates David Gau and Molly Stieber, will continue the “aggressive” campaign they began two or three weeks ago, when Shull was uncontested in the presidential race. Shull said he and his slate-mates have been attending various campus groups’ meetings — sometimes six, seven or eight in one night — seeking endorsements.

Romeo said he plans to run a “very different campaign” from the one he ran last year. This year, he said, he will have “no allegiances, no affiliations” and no meetings requesting endorsements from clubs. Romeo said he’d prefer to campaign by speaking with people individually and by word-of-mouth.

“I’m going to do less,” Romeo said. “I’m going trust that if I’m meant to win, I’ll win.”

Romeo said he decided to try a new campaign strategy this year because he wanted to focus on his studies and because he thought large, “in your face” campaigns often annoyed students.

Students Matthew Brittenburg, Laura Paiewonsky and David Petrone also filed paperwork this week to run for board positions in next week’s SGB elections.