Caroline Henneman – Director of Communications and Marketing

Q: What is your platform?

A: “I believe it boils down to three simple terms. First is open and transparent communication. Obviously, anything that I put out there, I want it to be put out there for students to see and know about right away. I also don’t want to just utilize USG’s platforms or the university’s media platforms, I want to make sure I am working closely with the student media as well. Just because I’ve worked it for so long that I know it and I know how many people are there. They really do hit a lot of people here on campus, so I really want to work with student media. My second topic is about listening. Communications is a two-way thing, so not only do I want to communicate effectively to you, I want to be able to listen to you guys as well and hear the feedback of the students, and really understand what the problems are here that USG can fix because we are not going to figure it out and we aren’t going to find out what we can do to better the community without listening to you first. Lastly, my next and last platform is talking and working closely with clubs on campus and organizations. There is a lot of resources that USG has that when I talk to students they say I didn’t even know that exists. When it comes to financials or promotionals things that we can do for you guys, I really want to make sure that we are talking with the clubs and also getting their feedback as to what can help them, but also getting those resources for them and to have the best college experience that they can.”

Q: Why should people vote for you?

A: “I believe people should vote for me because with my major in public relations and my minor in Arabic, I have made communications my sole focus, educationally and personally. I believe I am very well-versed in communications, I feel like I have a lot of experience in communications. Right now I am running three campaigns on my own. One for this campaign, obviously for the elections. The next is for raising awareness about the prevalence of childhood trauma in Trumbull County. That’s a really big campaign I am doing right now through communications to better help someone’s lives. Lastly, I am doing one to raise diversity in the communications field. Working on all of these simultaneously I have realized that we can do this kind of work, I can raise a campaign and do research and create strategies and tactics to better understand and better understand the campus. Which puts me on an edge I guess. I know it. I love it. I have revolved my life around it, I love communications and the impact it can have on a person’s life. I have countless stories of how I have watched communications change people’s lives. I think that can happen here too.”

Q: What changes are you looking to enact?

A: “The first thing I want to do if I get elected, the week of, I decided to begin an “Our Voice” campaign. The Our Voice campaign would begin with research because I can already promise transparency and working closely with clubs and communicating with students, but I can’t tell you how or why yet, because I don’t have the research behind it. The very first thing I would do under the Our Voice campaign is to listen to everyone and get your voice. So I would do the research before next year even begins, I would finish up the spring semester doing it and over the summer and realizing and understanding the best way to get to the students. After that, we will go from there from what they said. For example, this year, which is super awesome, USG implemented the free feminine products within Taylor Hall and everything, all over campus. That was from one of the senators who was listening to the students on Twitter saying why don’t we have free feminine products, so she did a whole thing around it. That’s definitely where I want to start. I am really leaning towards sustainability as well and really understanding the reactions of people when it comes to making more green space on campus more readily available. As communications and marketing go, when we get back to campus Black Squirrel Fest is one of the biggest things that happen in September so that would be another thing I would work really hard for first and foremost, would be communicating and marking for that.”