Elections for the 19th University Student Senate (USS) will take place April 10 and 11. Current students in each class year will vote for class senators and elect executive board members, comprised of the next USS president, vice president and treasurer.
Adam Mullin ’20 and Whitney Jones ’20 are running for president, Julia McQuade ’20 is running for vice president and Steven Bradley ’20 for treasurer.
Mullin said his goal is to make tangible progress on the ideas and initiatives that senators and students bring forward in the beginning of the year.
“My priority is enhancing our mission and making sure we are staying true to that in all we do,” Mullin said. “I want to make sure we look to those points of our mission statement to be a diverse cross-section, to be a community of people, to be supportive, to be looking both inward at our community and outward at the community around us.”
To Mullin, this mission goes beyond the realm of academics.
“[I want] to connect with our Jesuit mission to holistically care, not just for the academic experience, but the extracurricular experience, the social experience, the athletic experience,” Mullin said.
For Jones and McQuade, who are running as a ticket, their priority is creating an inclusive community through open communication and engagement.
“The three pillars of our platform include engagement, inclusion and communication,” Jones and McQuade said in a statement to The Hawk. “An engaged student body comes from an engaged student government that listens and acts on concerns and ideas.”
The pair sees this platform being accomplished through the establishment of monthly town hall meetings for students to voice concerns and the implementation of office hours for the executive board.
“The campus’s biggest need in terms of governance right now is a more proactive and collaborative approach,” Jones and McQuade said in a statement to The Hawk. “More than anything, students want to feel as though they are being heard and taken seriously. We are here to work with campus to start to resolve long standing issues with our university and make sure each and every person feels safe and respected on our campus.”
Bradley said he believes the treasurer role will allow him to provide support for student life on campus.
“I want to motivate the rest of Senate and my fellow executive board members to at- tempt to use our budget to come up with new initiatives to properly serve the people we are serving for: the SJU students,” Bradley said.
Bradley said he sees the position of treasurer as one that will allow him to ensure proper funding for members of the campus community to meet their goals and feel supported.
“I believe that the campus needs people who are acknowledging the issues that are occurring, work directly with those affected by those issues and continue to work throughout the future so it continues to be something that shall remain in effect for future Hawks who decide to spend their years on our campus,” Bradley said.
Students can vote for their class senators and executive board candidates online through the Nest on April 10 and 11.
Alex Mark ’20 contributed to this article.
