In the cutthroat environment of Goizueta Business School, it is imperative that the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) Council Executive Vice President creates actionable change to positively affect all BBA students. For the 2025-26 term, the race for BBA executive vice president is uncontested — the sole candidate, Simon Stumbris (26B), is running on a platform based on events and not much else. Stumbris’ platform has potential, but its brevity shows a concerning lack of detail and precision. The Editorial Board believes voting no confidence is the best route for students to benefit from a greater breadth and specificity of ideas beyond programming, which is lacking in Stumbris’s platform.
Stumbris currently serves as vice president of programming for the BBA Council, where he has amassed experience in event planning and organization — this experience accounts for the stronger areas of his platform, where he advocates for expanding student programming through the BBA Council and reintroducing group-centered programming to build community within different niches. And while his platform expresses support for more student feedback incorporated into programming decisions, his substantive policy only extends to QR code surveys offered at BBA Council-sponsored events. The Board feels that Stumbris lacks initiative to address issues concerning BBA students beyond event-planning, such as academic competition, insufficient recruiting resources, and limited support for nontraditional business career paths.
While BBA Council events, such as Keeping Emory Goizueta Social (KEGS) and BBA Formal, plays a key part in its connective role within the business school, these ideas are not novel nor particularly effective. Organizing events for students is only one part of the BBA Council’s role, which also includes community building, alumni engagement and a critical legislative role in the policies that directly affect Goizueta students. Furthermore, when questioned during his interview with the Editorial Board about how he planned to accomplish the important task of community building in the current, hyper-competitive climate of Goizueta, Stumbris expressed no concern for the issue and thus did not have a direct plan of action to address the larger issues of the community within Goizueta outside of his ideas for events. BBA students deserve more than programming and opinion surveys from a future executive vice president.
The Board strongly urges BBA students to vote no confidence in this executive vice presidential race. If Stumbris is elected, we encourage him to present more substantive policy proposals and expand his priorities to encompass other issues relevant to the student body. If no confidence wins and the executive vice president position is vacant, the Board also believes that it would be in the best interest of the BBA Council for the elected BBA presidential candidate, Sydney Song (26B) or Cate Navarrete (26B), to appoint the losing candidate as executive vice president. It is within the president’s power to appoint the vacant elected positions of the BBA Council according to Section 6 of the Constitution of the BBA Council, and both Song and Navarrete show significantly stronger and specific visions for change. For a stronger BBA Council, vote no confidence in Stumbris so Emory University will have an executive vice president motivated to create actionable change.
The above editorial represents the majority opinion of The Emory Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Editorial Board Editor Marc Goedemans, Asst. Editorial Board Editor Carly Aikens, Asst. Arts & Life Editor Hunter Buchheit, Allie Guo, Asst. Opinion Editor Ethan Jacobs, Carson Kindred, Mira Krichavsky, Eliana Liporace, Niki Rajani, Josh Rosenblut, and Crystal Zhang.
