With the March 17th election results already concluded, five new students will be taking over the student senate starting next semester. For the vice president positions, junior and economics major, Emily Black, will be taking over as the new VP of Campus Betterment.
“My main goal is creating a committee that is representative of all students, of all as individuals, and of all identities. My goal is to include everyone and have their voices heard,” said Black.
Her plans on achieving this goal right now involve working with the centers, clubs, organizations, and other departments on campus to create communities more inclusive and representative of all students and faculty on campus.
Next up is the new VP of Finance, Luke Parrish. He is a sophomore majoring in finance and marketing, and already has a main goal in mind coming into the position. This is to push for more funding for clubs and residence life halls.
“The current freshmen this year who will be sophomores didn’t really get to live that freshman experience. So, I’m going to work with Emily Black to allocate those funds to being put towards activities as well as giving people the freshman experience, even though they are sophomores,” explained Parrish.
He also has a few other ideas that include food stations and gatherings to try and further bring back that freshman experience, but that all hinges on the direction of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Junior and graphic design major, Kailina Lewis was the VP of communications for this year’s student senate and will be managing the position once again next semester. In terms of her goals last term versus now, they have remained similar with small differences. Lewis’ goal previously was to get people more connected as COVID-19 disrupted the lives of everyone. Going into her second term as the VP of communications, things have slightly changed.
“I think the new goal, at least for me, is to kind of transition to some more in person contact and more posters being able to be put up and more digital signage because there will be more people on campus that are able to see and interact with those things, as well as the increase of in person events,” said Lewis.
She plans on achieving these goals by continuing to keep updating the Boxer social media page and website as well as assisting in promoting the online game nights and connecting with the new student senate members.
The final VP on the list is Isabelle Tayo. She is a junior majoring in biology and will be taking over as the VP of Leadership.
Her goals at the moment are very focused on the club fair coming up next semester.
“I know it was really tricky last year during COVID times to produce a club fair because we’ve never done it on an online platform before. We’re hoping that we can go back to in person club fair but if not, I just want to make sure that there is a clear timeline of when the club fair will be, when the clubs will need to submit all their materials so that they will have good representations at club fair, and that everyone is able to be able to present themselves to all the incoming people and anyone who would like to join more activities on campus,” said Tayo.
She plans on achieving this goal by issuing out the deadlines for the club fairs very early to give clubs a lot of time to prepare for the club fair. She also has a second goal in mind which involves improving the training programs at the Leadership Training Summit that club leaders partake in by integrating more Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI) training and carefrontation training into the summit.
Finally, there is the new president of the student senate, Kouchi Saito. He is a junior, double majoring in biology and business administration and management, and he has one goal in mind as the new president of the student senate.
“Sustainability is the main focus of mine and as a school in general. Becoming more sustainable and having sustainability in our forethoughts. I really want to minimize food waste because I know a lot of students have food insecurities at times and then that’s something I definitely want to tackle first,” said Saito.
In terms of sustainability, he also plans on sitting down with our food provider, Bon Appetit, to have an open discussion about how to improve as an institution as well as speaking to experts in the field of sustainability that are on campus to make more educated decisions about sustainability.
That was all five of the members of the new student senate and their goals. It will be exciting to see them achieve their initial goals along with what else they end up doing to help the people of Pacific. — Kaleb Makimoto
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