Q: Year, major, hometown:

A: I’m a junior from Huntsville, Alabama, majoring in history.

Q: How did you originally get involved with SGA? Or if you’re not currently involved, what made you want to get involved?

A: I first got involved my freshman year as a senate page. I knew a senator, and so I guess I sort of just went to the meetings and got a feel for it like that. My sophomore year, I served as the associate vice president of Student Affairs, which basically kind of functioned like the chief of staff for VPSA, so I started learning sort of how the position worked and sort of what all you could do in that role, just various things. This past year I served as the VPSA.

Q: What made you want to run for this position?

A: I think the best way to create change at the University, really any university, is through student government. I think that you have the ability to set up meetings with administrators. You have the ability to be the representative for the students, and I think that the EVP is an excellent way to do that. One of the things that the EVP handles is First Year Council to get freshmen students involved. I’m a junior this year, and I’ll be a senior next year. It’ll be kind of a neat way to bring these freshman students in and sort of talk to them and get their start in SGA. It’ll be a cool way for a senior to start the process for the next generation of leaders of SGA.

Q: What makes you the best choice for the office?

A: I think my experience as VPSA, if you look at some of the things I was able to accomplish, I have a track record of accomplishing the things that I set out to do. First was student organized seating. We expanded block seating 900 extra seats. There were no appeals for offsets. We worked to bring back Dixieland Delight, we worked to get free refills in the fourth quarter. I implemented a program that’s going to take place in 2019-2020 academic year called “Parking With a Purpose,” where students can work off parking tickets per year with two hours of community service. We’ve been working on a sexual assault climate survey. We did the first annual Three Days of Health for physical, emotional and mental health. We did a free Thanksgiving at Burke Dining Hall. These are things we’ve accomplished in one year. My track record proves that I’m the most qualified candidate for the job, no matter who’s running for it.

Q: What’s the biggest problem you see on campus?

A: When I decided to run and was looking at what I could run on, I think one of the biggest issues is we have a little bit of a disconnect with the student body on what SGA does. I think as vice president, one of the things I want to do is go and speak to all of the different groups we have on campus, to get to as many as possible, and kind of explain that we’re here for you, we’re students representing students, just sort of opening up the door for that kind of dialogue. I think another big issue is affordability. That’s one of my main platform points. I think our book prices at the Supe Store are very high, and it’s an added burden on students. I want to work with the Supe Store to establish a rewards program for students, where if you spend a certain amount of money, you get some dollars back, you get store credit. I hopefully want to work to make our campus more affordable.

Q: What do you hope to change?

A: One of the things is the rewards program. Something that we’ve done in the past that got swept away through the years was that we partnered with Kaplan, which is a test prep service. We’re hopefully going to get some free classes and free study books for the GRE, the LSAT and MCAT. Obviously not everyone who’s at the University wants to go to grad school, but I think there’s a big portion of students who do. The GRE, LSAT and MCAT, they’re all not cheap to study for. In order to make The University of Alabama better, and honestly make the state of Alabama better, we need to ensure that we are supplying all of our students with all of the tools they need to succeed, and I think that this is one of the best ways to do it. Lastly on affordability is I want to work with local restaurants so we can give student discounts. We can incentivize restaurants to do it, because we’ll shoot out campus-wide newsletters through email with the restaurants that are working with us, where if you show your ACT card, you get a certain percent off.

For student experience, I’ve got a couple of different things. We want to work with ENO for students. On the Quad, Bryce Lawn, Manderson Landing, we have a rule where you can’t use the trees that we have. The University of Texas in Austin has the same rule, but ENO went in and built these structures that you can hang your ENO on, so that’s something that we’re looking at doing here.

We’re also working with Dr. Taylor, who’s the vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and then the VP DEI in SGA and the History Department to conduct historical research on minorities on campus, as well as placing historical markers for minorities who made a difference on our campus.

For mental health, I’ve kind of already started this, but establishing a mental health task force that’s made up of student leaders to help advise the state government on mental health policy. The way that that sort of works is, I’ve talked with the speaker of the House and with minority leader Antony Daniels, and this is something that we’re going to work on and hopefully get it by the legislature and by the governor, just sort of bring students to the table and say, ‘Hey, here’s where we see the problem and here’s what we think could be done to fix it,’ so how can the state government help us?

Lastly is alleviating the cost of the Counseling Center, as well as making visits easier, and that’s sort of one of those things where I believe you get the first visit to the Counseling Center is free, and after that it’s $10, so that’s just something we want to make more affordable.

What’s one last thing you want the voters to know about you?

I’m just someone who wants to represent them, and I hope that I can do a good job.