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SCOTT DOWNEY
Special to The Leader
With all the hype in the media about the 2016 presidential election race, students now need to take a timeout from Trump and Clinton to think about something much closer to home. The declaration book where students announce their intention to run for president and vice president of the Student Association (SA) is officially closed.
According to Kathy Carrus, an administrative assistant at SA, this year’s election is the first to be completely online, but students can’t vote from their home computers. On Nov. 10 and 11 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., students may vote one time in the Williams Center by Tim Hortons. There are three slates for this executive-only election.
One slate is Connor Hoffman, a junior political science and journalism major from Williamsville, New York, and his running mate, senior English major Holden Bernstein.
Hoffman feels that one of the biggest problems with SA is a lack of interdepartmental communication, which leads to SA having a bad image with students.
“It is not easy to work with some of these people,” Hoffman said. “That’s what [we] are looking at, we want to change the dynamic of how the Student Association works.”
Hoffman wants to make a database for group use to improve communication and thus make SA more approachable.
Bernstein was not available for comment.
The next slate is Jason Burgos, a senior finance and business administration major from Angola, New York, and his running mate, Mary Kay Taylor, a sophomore history and political science major.
Burgos and Taylor also believe there is a communication barrier between SA and the student body. According to them, students don’t understand what SA is or what it can do for them. Their goals are to increase communication and diversification in the hopes that it will “strengthen the bridge” between SA and students and lead to a better image of SA.
“I believe as though our students need a voice in every aspect of the campus,” Burgos said, “including [the] administration. The Student Association currently needs to increase its diversification, especially with the [Center for Multicultural Affairs], who feel the most left out, and they need better representation … throughout the campus.”
The next slate is Maggie McHugh, a junior business administration and marketing dual major from Buffalo, New York, and her running mate, Kelsea Halloran, a sophomore English major from Rochester, New York.
In McHugh and Halloran’s opinion, the current administration is doing a great job, and they want to follow in their footsteps and continue its work. But McHugh and Halloran also feel that SA is a scary, intimidating authority to most students. If elected, they want students to come to SA with concerns, questions or if a new group is to be created.
“We want to see more faces in [the] General Assembly or just coming to talk to us,” Halloran said. “We want them to be comfortable in being part of a club or [being] an executive … know[ing] they can come talk to us.”