Allison Markert, a third-year studying natural resources and current student body vice president, is running for student body president this year. Her running mate is Isaac Carreno, a second-year studying social work who currently serves as the deputy chief of staff.

Markert and Carreno’s campaign slogan is “Stand for State.” Markert said the campaign operates under the three pillars of establishing a culture of care and connectivity on campus, promoting civic and community engagement and promoting Student Government interaction with students.

“We don’t feel as if NC State is as involved within Raleigh, as well as these civic opportunities, as it should be,” Markert said. “NC State is the largest institution within the state of North Carolina. It’s an election year coming up. It is North Carolina, being a swing state, this is something that we really have to focus on and capitalize on.”

Markert and Carreno said the main focus of their campaign is to get Student Government involved with NC State and the entire community. 

“We’re committed to ensuring that Student Government has a role being played within the Raleigh community, as well as bridging the gap between NC State college community and Raleigh opportunities,” Markert said. 

Markert and Carreno said they want to reestablish a focus on mental health, diversity and accessibility in the upcoming year by taking student opinions into consideration. 

“​​Moving forward in the future, not just developing on what we also have, we want to ensure that we’re doing targeted specific mental health initiatives,” Markert said. 

To address the students’ needs for mental health resources, Markert said she wants to embed more counseling resources in specific communities on campus. 

“That being what we’re seeing issues within Greek life, we’re seeing within the LGBTQ+ community, we’re seeing within all around campus,” Markert said. “And so what we want to do is we want to ensure that these organizations have specific initiatives to them because we found that it’s not a one-size-fits-all opportunity.”

Markert also said reestablishing NC State’s wellness department and administering counselor systems like Active Minds will help achieve mental health awareness. 

“We were able to work within our wellness department and one of the things we were able to do is pass out over 4,000 crisis number stickers for the back of the student ID cards,” Markert said. “It’s the crisis numbers that are at NC State specifically. We were able to work with a separate organization, Active Minds, to help promote the College of Engineering peer mentoring.”

Following the implementation of embedded counselors on campus and other indications of mental health resources, Carreno said another priority of the campaign is to open the discussion about diversity on campus through roundtable discussions.  

“We’re gonna bring roundtable discussions as a part of our administration, sitting down with a specific organization or student leaders once a month, and talking about the issues,” Carreno said. “Just going back to what we want to do of promoting interaction with Student Government and being clear and open.”

In response to how she plans to address University transparency surrounding the discovery of PCBs in Poe Hall, Markert said she wants to establish a liaison for the department of sustainability. She said she would use her power as student body president and the ties the position has with University administration to inspire conversations that bridge the gap between students and administration.

“One of the things that we want to do to address this environmental health concern is to expand our department of sustainability to have a liaison able to discuss environmental health and safety on campus,” Markert said. “And so one of those issues being Poe Hall, I think, from what we found is we have been in revolving conversations regarding Poe Hall, and what it looks like for students safety. And I think the worst thing that Student Government can do is to feed into the rumors and instead, it’s important to be inspiring and driving fact-based conversations.”

Markert said she hopes that she can promote transparency by showcasing accessibility on campus and continuing safety walks for security purposes. 

“Some of the things that we’ve been able to accomplish over the past year so far is we’ve been doing campus safety walks throughout all of our major sporting arenas,” Markert said. “We’ve had campus safety walks around campus when it comes towards moving forward, especially with the issues that we’ve been seeing on campus.”

Markert and Carreno said they want to boost student involvement by revitalizing Hillsborough Street and creating more programs for students. 

“And then a fun one that we’re excited to discuss is we really want to work to help grow community engagement, through revitalizing Hillsborough Street,” Markert said. “We’re hoping to do student nights, we’re hoping to do wellness events hosted by Student Government along Hillsborough Street so that students can be involved and be active.” 

Markert and Carreno said the end goal of the campaign is to achieve student involvement and awareness through civic engagement. 

“So our goal really is to empower students to be able to have the resources and the confidence to be able to provide feedback on the campus services that we have that will be heard and respected by Student Government,” Markert said. “The empowerment and resources to be able to speak with to be able to speak with student government regarding specific issues, as well as the ability to engage meaningfully with Raleigh Community and civic engagement.”

Voting for the general election is open March 4-5. To vote, visit getinvolved.ncsu.edu.