Reflections of a Failed AAS Presidential Candidate

Two weeks ago, I found myself in one of the most intense and draining situations I have faced since arriving at Amherst: I was one of two candidates running for president of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), alongside Charles Tufenkji ’28. I decided to run because I thought that all my experiences from being an AAS Senator since I was a freshman — dealing with everything from divestment in Spring 2024 to inventing the campus holiday, “Bunny Day” — would lend themselves well to working with administration and being a mentor for the senate. However, as I quickly learned, campaigning for AAS president is like having the flu: It feels physically and emotionally terrible, you cannot get any schoolwork done, and you desperately want it to be over as fast as possible.

My goal with this article is not to attack or undermine Tufenkji or his unofficial running mate, AAS vice president-elect Joey Supik ’27. I am friends with both candidates. I even hosted Tufenkji for “Be A Mammoth” in spring 2024 when he was an admitted student. All three of us are now working together to ensure that AAS is as successful as possible this upcoming year, and we ended up running against each other because we had minor disagreements over how AAS should move forward.

For those who might not be aware, being president of AAS is not that powerful, despite what the title suggests. The main job of the president is to meet with the administration, and to chair and set the agenda for AAS E-Board meetings. The president also has the power to veto acts from the Senate, but in practice, no president has done this since 2022.

Tufenkji and Supik ran on the slogan that “AAS is broken” and promised that they would take measures to improve AAS’s transparency and outreach to the student body. I tried to frame myself as an experienced and dedicated leader who could simultaneously advocate for students’ interests while also maintaining good relationships with those in the administration.

My goal with this article is to both frankly discuss the substantial toll that running for AAS president took on my well-being and to discuss how certain structural aspects of Amherst College — such as its small student body and Fizz — only amplified these problems. I will then discuss how we, as college members, can improve our public discourse, as well as what losing the AAS presidential race taught me about failure. 

On the Campaign Trail

Despite the ostensibly low stakes of the AAS elections, I found campaigning for president to be an intensely hurtful and emotionally draining affair. This was not because of any unique emotional vulnerability I have in myself, but is instead due to the inevitable struggles of trying to do politics at such a small school.

The predominant emotions that I felt while campaigning were paranoia and exhaustion. All week, I would refresh my phone and nervously text my friends and my unofficial campaign manager Alan Cai ’29, expecting that Tufenkji and Supik would release a new campaign reel that would take away all of my momentum. The exhaustion came from having to constantly perform for campus politics — some may recall that I taped my campaign flyer to my shirt during election week. I nearly dropped out of the race several times just because I wanted these feelings to stop. Granted, none of these are unique to my AAS campaign; they’re an inevitable part of any competitive election in any democracy. But there’s something unique about trying to campaign at a place like Amherst, where its small size and intimate residential community only exacerbate anxiety.

In most student government elections outside of Amherst, the candidates involved are not going to know the vast majority of voters they are trying to reach. For instance, at a school that’s student body represents tens of thousands of students, candidates know only a small portion of voters on a personal level. By contrast, at Amherst, it seems like everybody knows everybody — the degrees of separation are much smaller. Tufenkji, Supik, and I also happen to have had a decent amount of overlap in some of our social circles. This, of course, meant that the election created a substantial split among those we know.

Campaigning at such a small school is an inherently personal affair. I felt this rift the most when Tufenkji and Supik publicly announced their joint candidacy on the Monday before the election, when I realized that many people with whom I was also friendly had jumped ship and were supporting the two. Of course, I knew that most of these people were not supporting Supik and Tufenkji out of any animosity towards myself. What I felt at the time was an intense, personal rejection from dozens of people. All I wished at the time was that people would see me as a sincere and genuine person trying to help out. However, it did not feel that way at all.

Fizz Doesn’t Love Riz (or Charles, or you)

One of the most inescapable parts of being an Amherst student today is the anonymous platform Fizz. In his recent article, outgoing AAS President Shane Dillon ’26 does a great job breaking down the problems that Fizz has brought to campus. I want to discuss what it was like, and to draw lessons from, as one of the most discussed people on Fizz during election week. Some of the anonymous comments criticized my campaign in a constructive manner, such as those pointing out that my skills are much more conducive to planning events and projects instead of working with the administration. These comments were the minority, though. A substantial part of Fizz posts actively undermined our campus’s ability to have productive conversations about the election.

There are many examples I could draw upon, including the many hurtful and untrue attacks against both myself and Tufenkji. I condemn the untrue and hurtful comments against Tufenkji, though I will focus on attacks that I received because those are the ones I am most familiar with. More specifically, I will discuss the Fizz posts regarding a bullet point in my candidate statement stating that I have a disability and wanted to use my own  experience to advocate for disabled students. One now-deleted Fizz post claimed that I was intentionally misleading the student body by falsely claiming that I was the only candidate who could advocate for disabled students. Another post that is still on Fizz (as of writing) turned my statement into a cruel joke. Obviously, my goal in writing that bullet point was not to insinuate that Tufenkji, or anybody else, could not advocate well for disabled students, but rather that I would be uniquely poised to advocate for disabled students. While there is certainly an important discussion to be had about whether one has to belong to a specific group in order to advocate for them, the Fizz posts on this topic did not spark or contribute to that conversation.

Now, I know that nobody in my life whom I care about, nor Tufenkji and Supik, was writing these unproductive Fizz posts. I also know that, as I was advised by multiple current and former AAS members when I was campaigning, Fizz is filled with people seeking to stir drama for drama’s sake. And after all, political mudslinging has been part of practically the entire history of the country. 

So then, why should I care if I faced some attacks on Fizz? Well, if a hurtful comment about me received substantial upvotes, it would have been air-blasted to hundreds of people on campus. Every time I passed someone, there was a chance they had just gotten a notification on their phone saying I was lying to them because of something a supposedly omniscient stranger had said.

I felt dehumanized after receiving this kind of public shaming from Fizz. The app turned me into an object to be ridiculed by the student body. Of course, one can say that campaigning in itself is a dehumanizing experience because it involves reducing your humanity to a few selling points, and most voters will never personally know the politicians they vote for.

However, the position of AAS president is not even remotely important enough to warrant the objectification from Fizz that Tufenkji and I had to go through to contest the position. At the end of the day, I’m a student, not a politician. I want to be able to learn in an environment where I feel respected by others and learn from my mistakes. Fizz ripped away that privilege from myself and Tufenkji, turning what should have been a friendly race between two friends into a gross spectacle.

And do not think this dehumanization is limited only to those running for AAS president. It can happen to anyone. You are often one step away from being turned into an object to be ridiculed for the enjoyment of an anonymous crowd. Before the presidential election — at least to my knowledge — people had only said positive things about me on Fizz. What scares me the most is that the treatment I received on Fizz is nothing compared to the treatment that other students have received, which included death threats. I worry tremendously for the well-being of the next AAS candidate who gets attacked on Fizz and has less fortitude and a weaker support network than what Tufenkji and I had.

Words of “Rizdom”

A question that my electoral loss has evoked in me is how we can improve the electoral process on-campus to reduce the strain that campaigning puts on candidates. I do not have many suggestions on this front because a lot of the intense emotions I felt while campaigning were an inevitable part of running for public office at such a small school. The most important advice I will give to members of the student body is to be kind to candidates, and to remember that they are acting in sincerity and good faith, even if you do not plan on voting for them. I would also advise future AAS candidates to be aware of the strain running for office can take on you. And at last, I urge students to get off Fizz. In the absence of action from the administration, we students need to lead the charge to remove Fizz from campus.

I also want to comment on what losing the election has taught me about failure. The thought spiral that can come from rejection — as happened when I lost the election — was “because I lost this opportunity, then some job opportunity or graduate school will reject me, so my life is over.” I know this thought spiral is not true, but can it become all-consuming if you do not cut off your internal monologue.

One of the best ways to cope with failure is to embrace it and wear it on our sleeves. Embracing failure is not just a coping mechanism, but also a means of humanizing ourselves in Amherst’s pre-professional culture that can easily make us feel like we’re no more than a walking resume. I embraced failure by making a parody video celebrating myself as “your favorite failed president,” alongside Liz Aniello ’29 for her senate campaign.

Finally, I want to end by saying that I do not, by any means, want the takeaway to be that you should avoid running for the AAS. Quite the opposite, in fact. Even if you are only remotely interested, run for AAS. Run for AAS because running for public office is a noble act in and of itself. And even if you do not win, just remember that just by running, you are “fighting the good fight,” and failure is not the end of anything.