Elections for the President and Vice President of Operations (VPO) of the Student Government Association (SGA) are underway. Due to restructuring efforts and the writing of a new constitution that failed to pass, the usual fall semester elections were postponed last year to this spring. Students Liana Meyer and Julieann Murphy are running unopposed, for President and VPO, respectively. They sat down for an interview to discuss their goals and aspirations as candidates.
About the candidates
Liana Meyer is a 2/4 Mechanical Engineering Major at Stevens. She joined the SGA during her first semester of her freshman year, which was the fall of 2019. Since then, she has taken many leadership initiatives: in the spring of 2020, Meyer was appointed as the Campus Wellness Chair for the SGA, a position that she will be stepping down from upon her Presidency. “I do a lot of initiatives with Mental Wellbeing, as well as physical,” said Meyer, about her role as Campus Wellness Chair. Aside from her involvement in the Student Government, Meyer is on the Varsity Track & Field team, involved in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and she is also a Pinnacle Scholar.
Julieann Murphy is also a 2/4 Mechanical Engineering Major. She joined the SGA in the beginning of last fall. Her main involvement within the organization, thus far, has been working on the restructure, which she said has been her “focus these past months.” She has also worked with Meyer on Campus Wellness. Murphy is on the Women’s Lacrosse Team at Stevens and she is largely involved with the Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DNI) as the current Accessibility Advocate.
Motivation for running
Meyer expressed that “As President, you’re the main pass of communication between administration, the Student Body, and the Cabinet. […] It’s really just making sure that the student voices are being heard by admin and that they understand how we feel about everything that is going on on campus.” For Meyer, becoming President of the SGA was always something she had in mind, even when she first joined the organization as a freshman. “When I joined in freshman year, I thought at some point throughout college I would try to run for President and try to take on a bigger role within the organization.”
Murphy explained that “The VPO is the liaison between the Senate and the administration. […] I’ll know more about what students are doing so we’ll be able to connect that with admin.” She explained she believes she is qualified for the role of VPO “because I really care about under-represented communities on campus and giving them a voice. […] I think that’s really important and that’s why I’ve been involved with DNI.”
Aside from their individual goals and aspirations, the pair was also inspired to run by the current circumstances involving the COVID-19 pandemic and the restructure of the organization. “This past year has just been out of the ordinary, and we were approaching this restructure and we weren’t able to get as many votes as we wanted,” said Murphy. She explained that after the restructuring efforts came elections, which interested her and Liana — “we were like, you know what, this is the time, this is what the SGA needs, and so we want to be there and be able to support everybody and do the job that needs to be done.”
The pair has three overarching goals for their Presidency that they plan to focus their attention on. This includes working toward the improvement of communication, transparency, and equity within the Stevens community. “Those are our three big overarching goals […] we want to establish that as the new standard for SGA,” said Meyer. “Especially with the communication piece because I think that’s what is missing […] that’s something we want to establish to be firm and important for the upcoming cabinets and upcoming Senators,” illuminated Murphy.
Immediate goals
The team is largely focused on giving the students of Stevens a voice, and restoring the campus community that was diverted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Something I really want to focus on is making the return to campus feel super welcoming, and getting the community of Stevens back together again,” said Meyer, in reflection of the pandemic’s effects on school spirit. “I know that, especially the freshman class this year didn’t necessarily have the ideal school year, so just maybe having events to help everyone feel like a community again.”
“Going off of what we said earlier with communication, transparency, and equity, I think the reason that those have become our big goals is because, in the past, there has not always been the best communication between the Cabinet and the Senators,” explained Meyer. In order to improve such facets, the team wishes to allow the Senate of the SGA to attend as many meetings with administration as possible. They believe that this is possible due to the conveniences of online meetings, as Zoom allows for a large number of participants. “Because the Cabinet are the people that are meeting with all of the admin on different issues, that information hasn’t always been portrayed very well with the Senate; there’s a bit of a disconnect. We really want to improve that,” said Meyer.
Diversity & Inclusion is something that is very important to Meyer and Murphy, as well. They believe that once communication, transparency, and equity are improved, it will be “more equitable for all students to have a say,” in the words of Murphy. “We’re very open. We’re going to listen. […] We want to hear what the students want and that’s what we want to push; that’s what we want to demonstrate to the administration.”
In regard to the restructure of the SGA, Meyer and Murphy don’t necessarily believe that a new constitution is necessary. “It could be in the form of trying to push a new constitution again but it also might just happen in smaller edits to our current bylaws,” said Meyer, “I think once we tried to push the constitution and it didn’t go through, after looking at what the big changes were, a lot of it had to do with improving things like communication that can be changed by making edits to our existing documents as well. So it won’t necessarily be a new constitution, but I think that we will still try to implement some of the ideas.” Murphy explained that, “we’re definitely still listening and having these conversations” in terms of restructuring.
Meyer and Murphy are currently accepting applications for their Cabinet, which they will be interviewing candidates for and appointing. The Stute will continue to update readers on the election process.
Be First to Comment