Senator candidate for the Honors College

What’s your platform?

“My platform is to unite the student body face-to-face — not just through social media and the like, because people are worth more than that. As much as we freshmen make fun of Kate Ottoman’s book “Everyday Ambassador,” she’s not wrong in the need to truly connect with one another in personal ways. Online relationships are relevant, of course, but I firmly believe that we as a society have lost track of the value of the individual. We might know ten people who have awesome SnapChat stories, but we don’t know the name of the woman who sits at the register in the HUB for twelve hours. We text our group chats for homework help, but we couldn’t put the faces to the names if we tried. It’s time to put down the phones and look into eyes; people matter–not their online profiles.”

Why should people vote for you?

“I was a member of 4-H (a nationwide program that encourages the youth of America to learn about and participate in agriculture and domestic arts) for twelve years, last year marking my final year. I’ve held various offices in my club, from president, secretary to health-and-safety-officer and “veteran” member in which I guide new members in higher officer roles. Last summer, I was privileged to be one of the few Ohioans to attend Citizen Washington Focus, where I met with other 4-H’ers my age from all over the U.S. There, I studied how to form bills and pass them in Congress, as well as how to address and poll the populace in order to best represent them. Most recently, I had the honor of being the 2017 Summit County Fair Queen. In that position, I was able to speak openly with complete strangers about my passions – in this case, my fair and 4-H in general – and learn about their lives in return. It was a valuable experience that I will never forget, and I’m excited by the possibility of switching the title “Queen” for “Senator.”

What changes are you looking to enact?

“The biggest change I want to enact is opening USG to the public; while we do hold public meetings every other Wednesday, very few freshmen know anything about USG or how to get involved. Student government is such a wonderful opportunity, it saddens me to see it wasted or missed. This couples nicely with my face-to-face drive; I want more people to know more, both about the inner workings of the school, and about their neighbors and peers. I’d do this by holding more public office hours, opening up my mind and my effort to the Honor sCollege, and proposing ideas such as a campus-wide “Olympics” of getting to know one another – almost like a giant, on-going icebreaker game.”