BY MELISSA JOHNSON ’20
On Tuesday, April 2, Senate met in the Great Room in Blanchard Community Center for in-senate elections and working group mini town halls. Senators also took the time to discuss student feedback and ideas on behalf of their constituents and the specific groups they represent on campus.
For the in-senate elections, the senators heard one-minute speeches from current senators who were running for one of the three senate leadership positions: Chair of Halls, Chair of Organizations and Chair of Senate.
Chair of Halls had three candidates: Jane Kvederas ’22, Lauren Fuller ’22 and Kendall Morales ’21. The Chair of Halls works on behalf of the 18 hall senators that each represents one of the residential halls on campus.
During Fuller’s speech, she said, “I’d like to focus on encouraging and welcoming the student body to take advantage of and lean on SGA, as well as increase student awareness of their access to SGA by cultivating a stronger relationship between Hall Senators and the students they represent.”
Morales spoke to a similar issue. “My goal is to increase transparency between the Chair of Halls and students by making myself more accessible and ensuring student voices are heard,” she said.
After the Chair of Halls candidates spoke, the candidates for the Chair of Organizations had time to speak. The Chair of Organizations works with the senators that represent the many different student organizations on campus to help them get the resources they need to accomplish their goals.
Once again there were three candidates for the Chair of Organizations position: Stav Keshet ’22, Camila Moreno ’22 and Maya Sopory ’22. All of the candidates spoke about their personal experience working on student organizations on campus, and how the relationship between organizations and SGA can be improved upon.
“My goals for next year are to achieve unity, visibility and equality among organizations on campus,” said Moreno.
Candidate Keshet also emphasized a knowledge in how different student organizations have varied needs, and they plan to embrace those different needs and create change for student orgs through the work of senate.
The third leadership position at the end of the night was Chair of Senate which oversees senate as a whole. Despite being a very important leadership position, there were no candidates who were scheduled ahead to speak at the meeting. However, two current senators stepped up to run on the fly. Alisa Lopez ’22 and Esha Sridhar ’22 both stood up to explain their interest and potential goals as the future Chair of Senate.
Lopez said their candidacy for Chair of Senate stemmed from their desire to “foster an open space where we can communicate with one another. In addition, this space can be used to connect the Mount Holyoke College community to the administration.”
Sridhar also acknowledged that many students are frustrated with Mount Holyoke. Her goal is to create a system where we can “carry frustrations forward toward actual change.” In doing so, Sridhar wants to get more Mount Holyoke students involved in the town hall meetings that occur frequently throughout the semester.
After all candidates spoke, senators voted. While senators carried out miniature town hall meetings in their working groups, it was announced that due to a failure to reach quorum, the voting would be extended in an online poll to more senators who were not present for Tuesday’s meeting. Voting will close for senators on Friday, April 5.