Mitchell Moravec, a senior studying materials science and psychology, will serve as the Student Senate president for the 97th session of Student Government. He was sworn in on March 30, along with the other student body officers.
The 97th session of Student Government will be Moravec’s fourth in Student Senate. His campaign highlighted his experience in Senate leadership, as Moravec has served as Senate secretary, legislative secretary and Senate president pro tempore.
Moravec has worked at the GLBT Center, the Women’s Center and the Multicultural Student Affairs office. He also has served as a mental health ambassador and the Union Activities Board issues and ideas chair. Moravec ran for student body vice president as Cody Long’s running mate for the 96th session of Student Government, but lost to Paul Nolan and Brayndon Stafford.
Technician sat down with Moravec and discussed his goals and vision for the upcoming session.
What are your goals for the 97th session of Student Government?
This is my fourth session in Student Government, so I’ve kind of seen a lot of different leadership styles and kind of how we’ve tackled Student Government and student advocacy, and I think my goal is to first reflect on that, so go back to not only what I’ve experienced but before that, how has Student Government been done, what have been the best practices, so we can kind of move forward with those best things. We shouldn’t just see each session as “OK, let’s start from the beginning” but rather, just “OK, let’s see how we can build upon the good things of yesteryear and kind of make them better going forward.” I think one of my goals is to really look at our history and figure out how we can reflect back on what has been already [done].
As Student Senate president, are there any specific initiatives that you want to pursue in the upcoming session?
My thing has always been empowerment for the senators themselves. While previous sessions have definitely kind of put all the talking and the face into the student body officers such as the student body president, student body vice president and the SSP, I think that senators themselves should be empowered to contact their administration or work within their delegations. Establishing those connections themselves and not feeling like “oh I have to go through this person in Student Government to talk to someone,” but saying “I can start asking those questions myself and do it appropriately and effectively.”
You said in your campaign that you wanted to “rebuild relationships between college councils.” As Student Senate president, how will you do this?
Early on, it’s about figuring out who those people are. Which councils are out there, who are their presidents and who are their upcoming presidents. Establishing those connections, whether that’s anything from knowing their emails to knowing when a college council meets, and furthermore talking about whether or not the specific college delegations can be making these college council meetings, do they have obligations outside of those meetings. There needs to be different ways of staying up to date about what those college councils are doing. Early relationships are important so we can go into the next year strong.
Were there any shortcomings in the 96th session that you want to address during your tenure as Student Senate president?
In general, it was all about many senators didn’t know what other senators were working on until it came up. I remember a senator last year, when I was in Senate leadership, asking “how do I know about a bill before it becomes a bill.” and I was kind of stumped by that because I, myself kind of take a lot of initiative to talk to other senators. While that’s great, there needs to be an open communication between the senators about what they’re working on. That has definitely been a shortcoming about how we can establish that internal communication and also, I think if we start there, it makes our external communication between constituents and their senators even better.
According to the Student Government budget, you get a $4,200 stipend. It seems that much of what the Student Senate president does is behind the scenes. What do you do or what are you looking to do to earn this money?
It comes with rebuilding our student body officer realm. We need to realize that it’s not just the student body president and student body vice president, we’ve also got our treasurer, chief justice and the senate president, so how can we work as a team there and by bringing that team there at the top, we can bring the branches together below them. Beyond that, it’s the power of delegation. We don’t need everyone at this university thinking that we need to be pressuring [Student Body President] Jackie [Gonzalez] to move Student Government; we can worry about where are the assets and how we can more effectively use all of Student Government to tackle more things. By working with that and being more external, I can hopefully earn the support of students.
