With campaigning beginning last Friday for the 98th Student Government session, three candidates for the position of Student Senate president are preparing for the upcoming election on Feb. 27. Technician spoke to all the candidates about their experience, platform and why they deserve students’ votes.
Ryan Dunn, a second-year studying political science
Experience: I was elected in fall 2016 to one of the 10 first-year Senate seats and then after that I was elected this past spring to serve as a senator representing the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. In that role, I currently serve as chair of the Government Relations and Oversight (GRO) Committee and communications director for the Appropriations Committee. Before this was disbanded, I was the student voice on the Student Health University Standing Committee and then outside of Student Government, I am a University Scholar and a Read to L.E.A.D. mentor.
Platform: I want senators to have more contact with their representative colleges by requiring delegations to schedule at least one meeting per semester with their respective college councils or with their dean. I want to encourage senators within their college delegations to work together to seek out problems that their constituents may have and create solutions to those problems. It’s my goal for senators to be held more accountable to their constituents and to actively serve on their behalf. I look forward to hopefully using my experience to provide senators with the appropriate contacts and resources so that they can get the job done. Many students don’t know that the Senate president co-chairs the Fee Review Committee along with [Mike] Mullen. The Senate president makes recommendations to that committee based on the vote of the fees from the Senate. I hope to advertise this duty more so that students can contact their representatives to voice their opinions on the fees because there are so many campus resources that require those fees. … Senate passes those fees every year. [Those are] basically my two biggest points, and there is some internal stuff as well. As GRO chair, I work a lot with our student body statutes, which is kind of like the instruction manual for Student Government. There are a lot of places that contradict one another, or they’re redundant, so it’s one of my goals to work with the next GRO chair to hopefully go through statutes and create a better, more up-to-date document.
Why You Should Vote for Me: I believe that I have the most experience for the position, and I’m willing to work hard to reach a common goal and that is improving the lives of the students of NC State University.
James Withrow, a graduate student studying entomology
Experience: For the last three years, I have been treasurer of the Entomology Grad Student Association; so obviously, I’ve been involved in handling money and being trusted and all that ─ organizing purchases [and] all that kind of stuff. This last year in Senate, I’ve been involved in a bunch of things but probably the biggest areas: I’ve been on the Tuition and Fees Committee, and then also the Government Relations and Oversight Committee. Tuition and fees is one of the major tasks that Senate has to do every year … they give us a massive pile of dense paper that’s not really designed for us to go through and understand it. It’s a lot of work and instead of just rubber stamping that, I’ve been really pushing for us to reform that process and to make it more meaningful. … [I] have taken that job really seriously and really gone above and beyond. In GRO, I’ve always tried to be kind of a voice of reason, whether that’s dealing with impeachment or the other bills that come up. … I think the number one job of Senate president is to be an unbiased, fair leader, and I think that is really reflective of what my role in Senate has been so far.
Platform: The two real things I think Senate can work on is Senate is supposed to be representative of the student body, the largest student body in the state. We really need to work on Senate culture and communication and to be truly representative. As far as culture goes, there’s a lot of people in Senate that really love it and are super active, and that’s great; but there’s a tendency for it to be kind of a social club, and I think it could be more productive. I think really the side of that that’s the most problematic is that since I’ve been in, they have not been doing a good job of bringing in the new people and teaching them how to do their job, how things work, how to actually take your ideas and run with them and become more productive. We can’t really effectively represent the student body if we’re not doing that. … You can’t really legislate cultural change. Leadership needs to be thoughtful about how we structure things going forward next year and how we model the kind of cultural change that we want to see, … making sure that we bring people in and teach them how to do what they need to do, how to develop their ideas, how to communicate with administrators, how to network with other senators and promote the things they’re working on. The other side of that is the representation side. If you look around Senate right now, I think you’d see that it’s not super representative of the student body. … That’s the opportunity I see in all of the appointments that the next Senate president is going to have to make. While obviously I would want the best possible people in those roles, I think that recruiting from a broader sector of the student body would be a great asset in that. … [Student fees] are something specific that I care about. … Student fees are super important, I’m not actually anti-fee, they pay for a lot of great things. … It’s more of a question of are we getting the best value for that money and the fact that right now there’s really not meaningful student input in the fee process.
Why You Should Vote for Me: Vote bees, not fees.
Adam Schmidt, a second-year studying civil engineering
Experience: Last year I was a first-year senator, so I represented first-year and transfer students at NC State. Then, I was also the associate vice president of budget and finance for the Association of Student Governments, which is kind of the broad UNC System-wide Student Government organization that works with all the 17 campuses in the [UNC System]. This year I am a senator for the College of Engineering, and I also serve as the Senate president pro tempore, which is sort of like a Student Senate vice president, sort of like a chief of staff. I help oversee the logistic stuff, work with the committee chairs to make sure they have all the resources they need.
Platform: There are a couple of things I’d like to accomplish because I do think the role allows some flexibility with what exactly you can do. So, I’d like to see a little bit more transparent student fee review process. I feel like we could have been more transparent about that this year and in the past. I feel like Jackie Gonzalez, student body president, did a very good job at making her side of things transparent, but I don’t think Senate’s side was as transparent this year. I’d also like to see more leadership development opportunities given to student senators so that they can really do their jobs to the best of their ability.
Why You Should Vote for Me: I am the very experienced candidate that has a very good feel for what the position is and what the position can do, and I recognize that Student Senate is a very complex organization within an even larger more complex organization of Student Government as a whole and with that experience, I think that’s one reason; I recognize that an organization can only be as good as the people in it and a big part in why I’m running is that I really want to invest in those people and make sure that those people are empowered to be their best so that they can lift the voices of students and advocate for their constituents in the best ways possible.
Ryan Dunn, a second-year studying political science.
