Graduate Vice President candidate Jarett Lujan. (Photo by Avery Dishaw)
Ahead of their March 16 and 17 election, Texas Tech’s Student Government Association hosted their annual executive candidate forum on Wednesday, March 10, in the Media and Communications building on campus to discuss key issues and plans.
Candidates answered questions from a panel of interviewers and written questions from the audience and discussed initiatives they plan to implement upon election.
Jarett Lujan, graduate vice president candidate and PhD student in the Higher Education Research program, said he wants to strengthen unity between graduate students in efforts to implement change.
“Representation and kind of gathering the student voice together in that we have a lot of factions, a lot of different student organizations on campus that are graduate student-specific,” Lujan said. “I think that we need to gather together under one voice and continue to just advocate, you know, to our representatives and our campus officials.”
Lujan said it is important that we encourage graduate students to get involved on campus, and he plans to do that by including students in SGA conversations.
“We need more of a graduate student voice,” Lujan said. “I think there is a misconception about graduate students–that we don’t want to get involved–and that’s completely false. I think that we need to just mobilize ourselves a little bit better and include each other in the conversations.”
Taylin Antonick, internal vice president candidate and junior agricultural and applied economics major, said “listening has a lot of power,” and she considers herself to be a silent leader.
Internal Vice President candidate, Taylin Antonick. (Photo by Avery Dishaw)
“I would say my leadership style is to sit back and watch and listen and learn from the people around me,” Antonick said. “That has been one of the most effective things for me as I’ve been here in the student senate.”
Antonick said she plans to work with deans of colleges to help fill vacancies in the Senate, given that she will be President of the Senate if elected.
“I believe that the deans of our college, for one, know the students who want to lead and affect change in their colleges specifically, and so that would be my first point of contact. Contacting deans who I may not necessarily know but who may have at least ideas for students who’d be interested in serving in the Student Senate,” Antonick said.
External Vice President candidate Ebere Nwachukwu. (Photo by Avery Dishaw)
Ebere Nwachukwu, external vice president candidate, said she plans to start new initiatives to encourage high school kids in the Lubbock community to attend Texas Tech.
“We plan to start an initiative called ‘Lift While you Climb’, and we want to not just go from graduates to undergraduates but also take students from different walks of life, go to these schools such as LISD and talk to these people and see why college is for you and why Texas Tech will make it happen,” Nwachukwu said.
Nwachukwu said her experience in working with the community will help her enact her new initiatives.
“Just last week there are two different things I was able to work on–one of which I worked on with the current graduate vice president was getting chessboards out to students from different elementary schools,” Nwachukwu said. “It was a great experience just networking and talking with these people from these schools and seeing how things work.”
Faisal Al-Hmoud, student body presidential candidate, said his responsibility in this potential role is to advocate for students.
“There is still a lot of work to be done, and there’s still a lot of responsibility to do that, and where I find my responsibility in this role is to advocate for and to be the mediation between faculty staff administration and the students themselves,” Al-Hmoud said.
Student Body President candidate, Faisal Al-Hmoud. (Photo by Avery Dishaw)
Al-Hmoud said he plans to mend the disconnect, caused by COVID-19, between students and SGA through new initiatives.
“Not just through transparency, through a podcast, but also through updating our websites,” Al-Hmoud said. “There are a lot of ways that we can be a lot more transparent with students not only by updating them with our work but also through allowing them to give us their concerns.”
Texas Tech Student Government Association will be holding elections on March 16 and 17. Voting will open at 9:00 a.m. and close at 7:00 p.m. To vote, visit www.sga.ttu.edu. Results will be announced on March 19, at 6:00 p.m.
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