Student Body President candidate

What is your platform?

“To get Kent State more involved with Ohio Student Government Association. It’s all 14 public institutions in the state of Ohio. They collaborate and cooperate together to basically amplify student voice and exercise student power.”

“Increase campus safety. We rank 11th safest campus in the nation, which is phenomenal, but there is 11 more spots to get to.”

“My third point is to increase student involvement because no one is running against me. There are several races going uncontested and then there’s two seats that don’t even have a candidate. We really did a poor job this year outreaching to students so I have a few initiatives to get the word out about USG to our student body.”

Why should people vote for you?

“Quick one: no one is running against me, so it’s either me or a write in. Like I laid out in my platform, I know I’ve only been on USG for a year as Director of Governmental Affairs but as a director I get a little more insight than any of the senators did. Even outside of USG, for example, my freshman year I served on residence hall council, I was a member of Kent Interhall Council, I was also a member in Provost leadership academy, which is like a year-long leadership organization for freshman students. Sophomore year, I worked for Residence Services as a receptionist. So I have a decent background when it comes to student life and on-campus life even though I’m a nursing student. I thought a lot of people would be concerned if this was kind of like me foreseeing months ago if I had an opponent, someone would say, ‘Oh, he’s a nursing student that’s kind of hard.’ It’s challenging, but with my position in governmental affairs I learned a lot just with the higher education hierarchy and the hierarchy of the state government. In my platform, I said I want to make university students lobby more, I think I have a good background to get that done.”

What changes are you looking to enact?

“Like the lobbying, the campus safety. I think we need to do more like I mentioned. For example, one thing I ran on for my campaign in governmental affairs was getting voter registration into First Year Experience, the mandatory first year course. It’s been a work in progress, one of my big learning points last semester, my first semester on USG, was if you want to get something done, you need to do it yourself. When working with administration, you have to push pretty hard because they are receptive, but they’re busy. You really have to illustrate the value of any initiative that you want done.”