*Editor’s note: Thia Moss is a reporter for The Wichitan.

Student Government Association (SGA) officer elections will be held the week of April 13, with voting starting on Monday at 8am and ending on Friday at 5pm.

SGA provided the opportunity to get to know the candidates last Tuesday before the meeting. The forum included the candidates answering pre-prepared questions, as well as any questions from the audience.

There are two candidates running for the vice president of external affairs, one running for vice president of internal affairs and two candidates running for SGA president.

External Affairs

The two students running for VP of external affairs are English sophomore Victoria Perry and psychology sophomore Thia Moss.

Perry’s stance on transparency between students and the SGA is based on open communication. If Perry were to win, she would want to implement QR codes around campus that would lead to student experience surveys.

“We could monitor those surveys and hear back from [the student body] about their answers and their experiences,” Perry said. “To ensure transparency for us, I believe we could set up a system for students to contact us SGA members and have them come to us directly with their issues and their grievances [outside of SGA meetings].”

Moss’s perspective differed from Perry’s. Rather than ensuring transparency through accessibility to the SGA representatives themselves, Moss prioritized welcoming and getting students more involved with the established SGA meetings.

“I want to better promote student-centered meetings, and make it clear that students are welcome, and their voices matter,” Moss said. “I [will] also make sure that meetings are posted in a way that’s clear and easy to understand, so students can actually stay informed. At the end of the day, if students don’t know what’s going on, they can’t trust the process.”

As for connecting with the broader Wichita Falls community, Perry focused on students being representatives for MSU by hosting and participating in service focused events.

“We can focus on building a relationship with the community through those  [service] events,” Perry said. “A great example is like Mav’s Day of Service coming up, where we will get out there actually in the community and hands-on serve with those students.”

Moss’s focus was on working with businesses off of campus to help students feel more connected to the Wichita Falls community.

“That looks like building more partnerships with local businesses, the student discounts, intentions and events that actually make students feel connected to Wichita Falls,” Moss said.

The final question focused on improving SGA’s visibility on campus. Perry believes the SGA should be utilizing social media more, as well as collaborating with organizations on campus.

“I think that we can use tools like social media platforms and events that are more personable to increase visibility,” Perry said. “We can participate in more collaboration with student organizations here on campus and get to know and work with those organizations.”

Moss also argued that better utilization of social media would help improve SGA’s visibility.

“I want to take that a step further and make it more engagement and student focused. That means creating content that encourages interactions like polls, Q&A, students’ spotlights,” Moss said, “We will try to bring back opportunities so students feel like they’re a part of the conversation, not just being talked at.”

Internal Affairs

Psychology and political science senior Emily Shephard is running unopposed for VP of internal affairs.

Shephard’s focus was on follow through for the next coming year, as well as making herself and the other officers available to SGA senators.

“We really like to say that we’re going to do a bunch of fun stuff but what I’m hoping to do as my next term[. . .] is actually following through with the things that we promise,” Shephard said, “And making it easier for everybody to talk to each other and not be afraid to walk into our office for the office hours that we have. You can talk to us.”

Shephard reinforced this idea in later questions, stating that she would like the officers to have more available office hours for students.

President

The two candidates are political science senior Rory Rucker and social work senior Amelia Jackson.

During the first question, Rucker argued that there should be a more organized system to help students know what is going on on campus, as well as making the senate a place where students can ask those questions.

“I feel like when you’re in one thing, you’re in everything, and if you’re not in anything, you kind of just don’t know what’s going on on campus,” Rucker said. “So working alongside the vps and kind of making sure that all of our information is easily accessible and concise [for students.]”

Jackson took a different approach, offering to get color printing back on campus.

“Something that I’ve heard from students that I interact with on campus is that they wish that we had color printing,” Jackson said. “I feel like we could set up a student poll to see which students would be using it at all, because I don’t think it could hurt to make our campus a little bit more colorful, a little bit more engaging for our students.”

Both candidates plan on continuing to cultivate SGA’s relationship with administration. This would be through consistent communication and meetings with administration.

However, the SGA president’s job is just as if not more important when administration and student interest conflict.

“I want students to know that the job and responsibility of the student body president is to advocate for you to the best of my ability,” Rucker said. “The overall goal is to just continue to advocate and advocate, and let our administration know, ‘Hey, this is what your students want to see.’”

Jackson shared a similar sentiment.

“In a situation where the students and the admin disagree, my job isn’t to fix everything or just try to convince them,” Jackson said, “My job is to be the voice representing our students. […]  From there, I feel like the goal of those conversations is just to find a middle ground if there is one that is realistically going to happen.”