The Student Government officers for the 2016-17 school year will be officially sworn in Monday at 3 p.m. in the Currituck-Hatteras Ballroom in Talley Student Union. The president and vice-president-elects sat down with the Technician and discussed what they plan to accomplish and how they plan to solve problems currently facing NC State students.
Q: What is your plan of action for the remainder of the current school year?
A: Nolan: “I’ll say that we aren’t even in office yet and we have already made progress on the SG website. Our student government website is completely out of date and some of the things we told ourselves we would do is have new programs on the website such as a system to report a bias incident and we are going to have a system for Pack Petition. I’ve been working with OIT to make sure that these initiatives are in progress and hopefully by the end of this semester, we will have a good website that not only revitalizes communication purposes but also implements the plans I’ve outlined.”
Stafford: “Another thing we are working hard at is getting the applications for our cabinet together. We are trying to get those done as soon as we can so we can try to make progress. We need to solidify things so we can hit the ground running.”
Nolan: “We need to make sure we have strong people to lead those departments and strong students that are willing to volunteer in the executive branch.”
Q: What do you plan to accomplish at the beginning of the next school year?
A: Nolan: “Definitely planning for Packapalooza and Wolfpack Welcome Week is something we hope to get done and prepared for this summer. We also plan to help spread the word for students to get involved in Student Government.”
Stafford: “We are going to hit the ground running and to do that, I plan on accomplishing two things off the bat: one is to improve the transparency between student government and the rest of the campus community and the other is improving the racial climate here on campus.”
Q: What are your plans for dealing with and improving the current racial climate on campus?
A: Stafford: “I’m very passionate about improving the racial climate here on campus. Our team has already started working behind the scenes to come up with solutions to help combat this problem.”
Nolan: “We are working with current student leaders who have already put in work to improve the racial climate. Our motto is ‘Think and Do’ — there are so many students that have already done the thinking and now it is time for us to do. Brayndon and I need to reach out to other student leaders during the summer to make plans for what we need to do.”
Stafford: “One initiative we have is to educate students about cultural conflict during orientation. This is something that is very important and we must not take lightly so we might plan to make a video to show at orientation dealing with conflicts of race and how we can work to solve them. We have to work with student leaders that have already worked on this topic to ensure that their work has not gone in vain.
Q: Many students have raised concerns about sexual assault. What are your initial plans to help solve the problem of sexual assaults at NC State?
A: Nolan: “We are definitely continuing the ‘It’s On Us’ campaign. We must make sure that all of the effort and initiative Carson Shepard, the current administration’s chief of staff, put into this campaign does not leave when she graduates. It is now our responsibility to continue these efforts. We must also decide which executive department this campaign will go under and who will be in charge of it.”
Q: Many students have mixed opinions on the HOWL email. How are you planning to relay information to the student body and what will you do to ensure that the campus community is well-informed of what is happening around campus and in student government?
A: Stafford: “One of the things we would like to continue is to publicize different events and activities that organizations are hosting. Many organizations may not have the manpower to get out information to students even if it is a very important event. This also helps to build cross-campus relationships. I think we just have to be creative in the ways we will get information out about what is happening in Student Government. We don’t know for sure what we plan on doing, but it will be different.”
Nolan: “This is something where I would love to incorporate ideas from other candidates’ platforms. One thing that Robinson/Jones said was to make the HOWL into a video. Maybe we can do both the text script of the email paired with a nice video.”
Q: You have already given an example of an idea a presidential candidate had about something they wanted to implement. Are you planning on talking with former candidates to discuss ideas that your administration could implement?
A: Stafford: “It is important to make sure it is okay with them that we try to implement some of their ideas. If they are willing to let us use some of their ideas then that would be very beneficial. All of the candidates had very good ideas and it is important that those ideas do not go in vain. I don’t think that this has been done in the past. I think that this is a great opportunity for them to work with us to create positive developments on campus.”
