By Bria Isaacson, Staff Writer
The votes are in and the Executive Cabinet has been chosen for the 2016-2017 school year.
Incoming senior Matthew Jackson will be the Student Body President, incoming junior Matthew Young will be Vice President of Student Governance Association (SGA), incoming senior Lizzy Sherwood will be Vice President of Student Activities Board (SAB) and incoming junior Blake Ingram will be executive cabinet Secretary.
Each newly elected official is excited to do their part in making Asbury University even better. One of the big goals for next year is continuing to work towards school unity, according to Ingram. “This will look different for each position, but I’m really excited to work with the students and unify the school,” he said.
Jackson is excited to work on building next year’s team and working to form their vision of unity for Asbury Student Congress (ASC). One aspect that Jackson wants to focus on is organizing ASC events that bring people together. “I really want to work towards having events with more mass appeal, and that means trying new events,” Jackson said.
In addition, he wants to build the student section at school sports games and bring in new school clubs to represent different parts of campus.
Winning their fellow students’ vote was a huge honor, especially since there were many more candidates running in this year’s election than in previous years. In fact, senior Meredith Anderson, the current student body president, ran unopposed in last year’s elections.
In comparison, this year’s elections included four candidates for student body president, four candidates for vice president of SAB, two candidates for vice president of SGA, and two candidates for executive cabinet secretary.
This fulfilled one of the current EC’s goals for this year: making the elections more competitive.
“This past year, the EC team has been working hard to show students that these positions are so valued and important,” Anderson said. “I am ecstatic that there were so many candidates this year!”
Due to the number of students running, EC held primary elections this year for both Student Body President and VP of SAB positions.
EC also stressed the importance of attending the speeches, in order to have informed voters.
“Passion is important in these positions,” Anderson said, “and it was clear in the speeches that these candidates have passion for EC. I was so excited to see the entire Student Center full of students for speeches, not only supporting the candidates…but also becoming more informed voters.”
As always, EC welcomes comments and suggestions from students on how it can better serve campus.