Patrick Moorman, sophomore political science major, running for honors college senator  

What is your platform?

“First, is focusing on helping students, well helping Honors College students but also students overall. I want to look into making the Honors College male room into a little work out area with a few treadmills and a lift machine. Basically, I am writing a budget proposal and offer it up to either the Wellness Center or Dean Allison at the Honors College. Either way, I’m going to write a budget proposal saying ‘Hey, we can turn something that we’re not using into something else.’

Another pro-student platform I have is, they already did this last year and I’m gonna just help them do it again this year, the USG making the suggestion to raise the credit hour cap to 21 hours instead of 18 just to make financial burden easier on students.

And of course, also joining the USG in asking for a better meal plan and asking for fewer swipes and more declining balance.

I have a platform about justice. Justice includes supporting campus workers and student workers, that means if you see campus workers going on strike I will be there supporting them through that.

And just supporting an increase in diversity both in the USG and the Honors College. I think there are some problems that need to be addressed especially in USG and the Honors College. I want to leave USG better than I came to it. I want to make sure that USG has less people that look like me as senators there. And I think that’s really just outreach. I think that USG isn’t great at advertising number one, what they can do to empower students and number two, how students can get involved.

One (other thing) for helping out the Honors College is, we have to take the Honors Colloquium and that turns off a lot of people from joining the Honors College in the first place. So, I want to propose that we make Honors Colloquium able to transfer the credit, if you take a history based Colloquium you can make it a history credit instead of an English credit. I think that’s important also for a broader go I want for the Honors College. We advertise ourselves as ‘uber-exclusive,’ ‘It’s just for the smart kids’ thing, well it’s not that at all. You can join the Honors College at any point in your college career if you have a 3.5. And I just think that we advertise ourselves we’re not. We should be seen as a stepping stone to get into Grad School and we should be seen as another resource instead of some exclusive club because we’re not that, we’re just another University resource.”

Why should people vote for you?

“I think they should vote for me because I am definitely going to at least try to take steps to improve the Honors College. A lot of USG candidates who are running will say ‘I can only do so much to get the student’s voice if they don’t come to my office hours I can’t really represent them’ but I am going to seek out the opinions. I’m not just going to sit in my office hours and let the time go by. I’m not doing this for resume stuff or I’m doing it because I’m a nerd and I think politics are cool and I think you change things with politics. I will be actively canvassing and I will be trying to listen to students’ opinions.

I think the biggest thing that will set me apart is that I just take stances on things. I don’t just make the easy promises, I don’t just say ‘We’re going to make the meal plan better!’ I am actually taking stances for justice for hourly workers, I’m taking stances to improve both the USG and Honors College that they represent everyone.”

What changes are you looking to enact?

“I want to get into my position and I want to, there’s a lot of money that the USG handles, there’s a lot of power that the USG has and I want to make students aware of it and I want to use it to make my college better. And if I am granted a greater voice as the students’ representative and I represent the student’s voice, I want to use that to let the Dean of the Honors College know things that we want to change.”