Associated Student Body executive election campaigns are in full swing, and on Tuesday evening, students heard candidates discuss their platforms and debate relevant issues. Four of the six executive positions have candidates running unopposed, while there are two candidates for treasurer and two candidates for judicial chair.
Morgan Atkins, a junior public policy leadership major, is the only candidate for ASB president. She said the most pressing issue on the Ole Miss campus right now is that student engagement and the accessibility of the campus community have suffered greatly during the pandemic. Atkins plans to collaborate with leadership and engagement ambassadors to get students involved in campus organizations once officially elected student body president.
“Right now, students feel isolated, and they feel removed from what should be such an integral part of their personal growth,” Atkins said.
When asked what her plans are to help connect students and administration on campus, Atkins said that as president, she will make all of her meeting minutes available to the public on the ASB website.
“I want a good relationship with the university administration,” Atkins said. “But first and foremost, I think there has to be a sense of understanding that we, as ASB, exist to fight for students’ rights and needs before anything else.”
Katelin Hayward, the current ASB secretary and sole candidate for the office of secretary this year, opened the debate.
“I really ran on a platform of transparency and communication and making sure that whatever was going on in ASB was being effectively communicated to the student body,” Hayward said.
Judicial chair candidates joined via Zoom to debate. Autumn Fortenberry, a junior public policy leadership major, and Sabrina Davis, a sophomore political science major, had similar opinions on how justice should be pursued at Ole Miss.
“We want to be a body that’s advocating for students and with them — to and through their peers — to foster discussions and to continually renew and restore our community,” Fortenberry, who has served on judicial council since her freshman year, said. She said her platform revolves around access, justice and reform.
Both candidates said they want Ole Miss Student Conduct to be a more inviting and readily-available resource for students. Fortenberry and Davis also said they believe in restorative justice, which aims to repair harm through resolutions.
“I think it’s very important to use (reformative justice) and to also support education, explaining what restorative justice means to the entire campus,” Davis said.
Davis also said she wants to emphasize fairness through her platform, which is “of the highest value when it comes to these different situations.”
Apart from judicial chair, the other contested position is ASB treasurer. Junior Jake Camp is pursuing a triple-major in accountancy, economics and public policy leadership. He said his campaign centers around making the process for organizations to receive funding from the treasury department easier, noting that the ForUM website is “straight-up awful.”
The other candidate, Alex Mabry, is a junior biology and science education double major. She is running on a platform of increasing transparency involving financials. She said that although the ForUM website is not the easiest to use, the tedious funding request process is necessary.
“There’s only so much you can change when you’re dealing with funding requests and large amounts of money from a variety of different people without devaluing the integrity of the system,” Mabry said.
Both candidates agreed that the next treasurer has a responsibility to bridge the gap between the university and student organizations. Camp said not enough students know how to request and receive funds through the treasury department.
“(Student activity funds) are paid into by every single student, but it is nowhere near every single student who’s paying out from those funds and are receiving benefits from those funds,” Camp said.
Grace Dragna, a junior public policy leadership and economics major, is the sole candidate for ASB Attorney General. She will have sole authority to create social media guidelines for next year’s ASB elections.
“I think the best approach is to give candidates as much freedom as possible by allowing them to post on all platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, all of the above, without charging them on their expense report unless it’s professionally created,” Dragna said.
She also said that in order to make elections more accessible and equitable for minority and non-Greek students, the Department of Justice should visit registered student organizations ahead of campaign seasons explaining the election process.
Richard Springer, a junior mathematics major and the only candidate for the office of vice president, said his platform revolves around three pillars: freshman outreach, commitment to diversity, and transparency and accessibility.
Springer also discussed how he was going to ensure ASB is focused on meaningful pieces of legislation that aid the student body.
“That starts as soon as senators take the oath of office,” Springer said. “I’m a firm believer that senators get out of the senate what they put into it, so I think that a big part is connecting senators with constituents.”
Elections for executive officer positions and ASB senators will take place on March 2 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Students will vote using their myOleMiss accounts.
