Cameron Cummings and Karolina Heathcock, senators of the Mississippi State University Student Association, were declared the winners of the 2025 Student Association presidential election on Thursday, Feb. 20. Their victory came after an election period that was marked by the emergence of an anonymous hate campaign. Many current SA members also called into question the involvement of current Student Association Executive Branch members with campaigns.
This election was the first to restrict candidates to only four days of campaigning on the Drill Field, meaning candidates could only table on campus Thursday, Friday and Monday leading up to the election and on election day. Four tickets started on the ballot, eventually leading to a runoff on Thursday, Feb. 20.
Anonymous Forums
The 2025 presidential candidates mentioned multiple times social media app Yik Yak’s involvement in the election. Yik Yak allows users to post anonymous content, and other users can either upvote or downvote content. The app works based on location, so a user posting on the MSU campus would only see content posted by people in the surrounding area.
Candidate Trace Howell, a senior political science major and the speaker of the senate for SA, claimed that he knew to delete the app before starting his campaign but was still made aware of accusations against his character.
“There were just a lot of different allegations and different things said about my girlfriend, about our relationship, about my character in general, just about really anything,” Howell said. “My fraternity was also attacked. Especially on Yik Yak, we saw a lot of anonymous things people were posting. Word of mouth travels. It was very hard running a campaign while simultaneously defending yourself… A lot of it was secondhand, just people letting me know, because I don’t have the actual app. I had to tell people eventually, ‘Please stop sending me things about myself.'”
Howell and his running mate, Easton Wamble, lost in the general election. The subsequent runoff included two tickets: Cummings/Heathcock and Helton/O’Connor.
Vice President-elect Karolina Heathcock, a junior wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture major, also discussed the app’s impact on election season.
“Yik Yak has become a popular platform for people to say some quite harsh things, not only just for us, but for the other ticket as well,” Heathcock said. “I don’t necessarily think it was the people running their campaign in particular, or the people from our campaign running, but rather I think that there was just more people that were interested in the results of this election. There were definitely some negative comments regarding body sizes and racial connotations, and even just accusing people of fraud.”
Cummings/Heathcock won the election with 51.91% of the vote, compared to the 48.08% that the Helton/O’Connor ticket received. Bryce Helton, a junior finance major, also felt the strain of negative comments.
“It’s hurtful, but you know, running for a position like what we’re running for, you have to understand that it comes with the job,” Helton said. “You can’t take it to heart, and the biggest thing for me is that I know myself. I know that the people saying these things about me did not know me, and you just have to keep your head up.”
Rachel Carpenter, who currently serves as a graduate student senator, served as director of marketing with the Smith administration (2021-2022) and chief of staff with the Guest administration (2022-2023). After helping out with the Howell/Wamble campaign, he was able to give perspective on the feelings of past elections.
“I mean, I’m not up close and personal with every campaign, but from what I’m seeing online, this is truly a race like no other,” Carpenter said. “Last election cycle, I wasn’t paying attention quite as closely, but for the three prior, I was directly involved as a member of exec and, at certain points, had been serving on certain campaign teams. This has definitely been out of the norm, for sure.”
Rachel Carpenter and Ellie Herndon both served on SA during the same term. Herndon, who served as SA president from 2023-2024, explained that the Yik Yak accusations have also been around for previous years.
“I distinctly remember, when I ran for treasurer, there were a lot of false allegations out there,” Herndon said. “There were people saying that I failed financial accounting, which was not true. It was a prerequisite to have a B in financial accounting to run. I obviously can’t speak to the level of scrutiny that other candidates have experienced, and for that, I’m thankful, but I have immense sympathy for that, because you think you’re putting yourself out there on a platform to do good for campus, and seeing people say some of the most disgusting things you’ve ever seen on an anonymous platform is tough.”
After the election outcome was announced and word spread that Cummings/Heathcock had won the race, Yik Yak exploded with posts announcing victory for “Legos,” a nickname the Cummings/Heathcock picked up for their use of Legos in their campaign graphics. Most negative posts had, at the end of the day, been deleted or drowned out by the positive posts.
Involvement of SA Executive Council
The Student Association Constitution and bylaws do not bar SA executive council members from endorsing other candidates. Many of the SA members involved in this year’s election had conflicting thoughts on how far that involvement should reach.
“It is not specifically outlined that no exec member can support a candidate,” Howell said. “That has never been stated in the constitution. It has been tried in the past. Historically, it’s been the honorable thing to do and the professional thing to do to stay out of elections, especially when you’re serving on exec that current year. Your name has a little bit of weight to it.”
In Rachel Carpenters’ first year on SA exec, she participated in the treasurer campaign, backing candidate Madison Dochety over Herndon, who later became SA president.
“For us, it always depended on, ‘Do we have an exec member running?’ If we didn’t, it was kind of like, yes, but participate in a way where you don’t compromise the integrity of your position,” Carpenter said. “A lot of these students that are going to be running are your cabinet members, they are your people in the Senate. Try to let them know that, regardless of the outcome, you were cheering them on as a person the whole time, even if you weren’t voting for them.”
Hunter Yelverton is a senior majoring in industrial engineering and business. He also serves as the director of policy, a position on the SA executive council. He was informed of Helton and O’Connor’s decision to run before it was announced. After learning this information, he helped organize the campaign and tabled for them.
Yelverton heavily emphasized a divide between his role as director of policy and his work for the Helton/O’Connor campaign.
“I’m very, very much involved, so I always try to support whoever my friends are that are running, whoever I feel like would do a good job, whoever I feel like I should support,” Yelverton said. “I’ve done a little bit every year over the past four years.”
The judicial branch of SA handles elections, not the executive council. After ballots expire on election day at 5 p.m., the faculty advisor for SA, Kylie Forrester, prints the election results. These results are given to the judicial council, which looks at them and checks expense reports. The executive council typically signs the results and announces them.
This year, Yelverton decided to abstain from signing the results, owing, as he said, to the fact that he had already publicly endorsed a candidate.
“The only thing it says in [the SA Constitution] is that members of the elections commission, which are our judicial members, our chief justice, our elections commissioner, they are not allowed to support any candidate,” Yelverton said. “Anyone else in the Student Association, including executive members, can support whoever they want. I fully believe that. I think it’s a constitutional right, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of expression.”
Helton claimed that all of their supporters were friends who felt like supporting their campaign.
“The exec were not supporting in any way more than just friends that help who they want to,” Helton said. “There was no insider anything, there were just friends. They had no involvement.”
Referring to elections the past, Carpenter continued to explain that beyond cheering on other members of SA, campaigns in the past have allowed for friendships to form.
“I was on a campaign against Ellie, and me and Ellie are now best friends to this day, and I’m still best friends with the girl whose campaign I served on and lost to her,” Carpenter said. “That is not going to be the outcome of this election. No one is walking away from this best friends.”
When asked about the lasting effect of the involvement of the SA Executive Board, Howell was blunt.
“We’re seeing it work as a self-serving organization instead of an organization that speaks for the students,” Howell said. “That’s why we have so many exec members who are currently endorsing certain candidates. We’re kind of making it to a machine situation here, which is never good.”
Herndon explained how she spoke to her executive council about endorsing candidates, emphasizing that it was about supporting everyone within the organization.
“It’s discouraging to think that the people that are currently in the organization are against you,” Herndon said. “When I ran for and was elected President, I of course, had an obligation and duty to uphold to not be involved in elections. But I asked of my executive council — at the end of the day, it was their choice, I can’t make that choice for them — but I asked them to stay out of elections, out of courtesy for the candidates, so we could be an unbiased platform for them.”
Leave of Absence by Deputy Chief of Staff Hayden Anderson
Deputy Chief of Staff Hayden Anderson has attracted attention after stepping down just days before the general election. The deputy chief of staff is a position on the executive council that directs Freshman Reach. On Thursday, just after the results of the runoff were announced, Senate Oversight Chairman Abby Reeves emailed SA President Carson McFatridge inquiring about the vacant position.
“There have been statements made among Reach and the greater SA about the veracity of his reason for absence. These statements claim it was Hayden’s personal choice to step down from Reach in order to continue actively supporting an executive campaign. If this is true, many view this as revealing of his priorities since he is willing to step down voluntarily from Reach in exchange for the freedom to openly campaign for an executive candidate, which is a practice that has been discouraged and viewed in bad taste by SA Executive members for the past few election cycles,” Reeves wrote in the email.
Reeves cited Article II, Section 7-B of the Student Association Constitution, which mandates the president to appoint someone to fill a vacant vice president, secretary and treasurer spot, with a 2/3 Senate majority approval required. The deputy chief of staff is not explicitly mentioned in this section, which Reeves was able to explain, noting the “expectation.”
“It doesn’t specifically mention Deputy but that is because the Deputy isn’t written in the Constitution at all,” Reeves said. “The first mention of Deputy is in the Bylaws. But the Bylaws have no mention of temporary leaves, so the only basis on how it should be treated is with this section. The Executive members — elected and appointed — are treated with the same expectation usually which is why I think this is important to note. But this is also why I used expectations in my email and not rule.”
Anderson’s resignation was met with many opinions from the Student Association and presidential election candidates.
“If you’re director of Freshman Reach, you have 100+ impressionable freshmen that are going to follow your word,” Howell said.
Anderson has been reinstated as the Deputy Chief of Staff. Hunter Yelverton explained his reappearance on the executive council as a matter for university administration.
“This will be an administrative decision,” Yelverton said. “Hayden is officially back on the Student Association. He is the current Deputy Chief of Staff. He took a one-week leave of absence, and his student salary was rerouted to the Student Relief Fund, which is for students affected by natural disasters like the hurricane we just had. He’s back; that was an administrative decision made by the Dean of Students’ office and Student Affairs to let him take that leave of absence.”
Attempts to reach Anderson for comment by print time were unsuccessful.
