Sophomore and current SGA senator, Krupesh Patel, is running for SGA comptroller for the 2018-2019 school year, and he wants to use his financial skills to improve VSU.

Patel emigrated from India to Georgia when he was 10 years old, but if you knew him now, you wouldn’t know that he couldn’t speak a bit of English.

“When I came here, I barely spoke English,” Patel said. “But I came here, and I learned a lot from school and everything.”

After moving to Georgia, Patel and his family settled in Valdosta where they set up a convenience store, and as Patel grew up, he found VSU.

“Everyone wants to go out of their town to go get their college experience, but VSU was my first choice,” Patel said.

Patel made VSU his first choice for financial reasons and to stay close to home, but he said that even without those reasons, he’d still make it his first choice.

“It’s given me a home away from home kind of feeling that you get when you go out of town to go to college,” Patel said.

Patel stays at his home in Valdosta, but said he still gets to experience campus life. He’s been a part of the orientation team and a university ambassador where he met the people who inspired him to join SGA: Amea Thompson and Jacob Bell.

“I’ve learned a lot from them,” Patel said. “We’re all sophomores, but I feel like we’ve contributed to each other’s learning.”

Patel said that he, Bell and Thompson were friends for the past year and a half, but it was Thompson that really got him into SGA.

While working together on the summer 2017 orientation team, Thompson taught Patel leadership skills and explained to him what SGA does for VSU. This led to Patel eventually becoming an SGA senator during 2018’s spring semester.

Though his time in SGA was short, Bell approached Patel and asked him to join Bell’s executive ticket, VSUnity, where Patel currently campaigns for the position of comptroller.

Patel believes that he’s a good choice for comptroller since he has worked to help financially run his family’s convenience store.

“I’ve learned a lot of financial skills from my dad,” Patel said.

Some of the skills Patel learned was running a bank account and budgeting. He plans to use this knowledge to help in his comptroller duties.

Patel said that as comptroller, he plans to focus on one main issue: making sure students know about the Blazer Allocation Fund.

“I feel like a lot of organizations and students are unaware of the $23,000 Allocation Fund that is set for them,” Patel said.

Patel said he wants more students to use it since it is basically paid for with their tuition money.

“If they knew about the Allocation Fund, then I feel like there would be an increase in activities from different organizations and students would be more involved or outgoing,” Patel said.

Patel said he wants students to use SGA’s money to challenge themselves more and follow their dreams.

Going into the position, Patel only fears one thing: being thrown into an uncomfortable or challenging position. Even in acknowledging his fears, Patel knows that his team is behind him 100 percent.

“I have great team leaders with me—Jacob, Amea and Rachel—that have been by my side for a year and a half,” Patel said. “We as a team will be there for each other no matter what challenges we face. We’ll be ready to take any challenge that’s thrown against us.”

Voting for SGA elections begin on Thursday, April 12, at 12:01 a.m. and ends Friday, April 13 at 11:59 p.m.

Click here to vote.

Written by Bryce Ethridge, News Editor. Photo by Taylor Sutherland, Staff Photographer.

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