Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series on important issues in the upcoming SA presidential election. Look for profiles of the candidates Feb. 16.The two candidates for Student Association president both have records of leadership within the SA and in other organizations.
Jeremy Johnson, currently the SA’s administrative liason and two-year president of the Black Student Alliance, and SA Attorney General Aaron Rice have formed ideas about the presidential role.
Role as president
The next SA president must be able to represent all groups of students on campus to city, state and university officials, Rice said.
“I think the SA president wears a lot of hats. Obviously, the overall objective of the SA president is to be an advocate for students.”
Johnson also said his role as president, if he’s elected, will be as students’ advocate.
“[I’ll] try my best to feel the pulse of our many 16,000 students … and take it to the administration and say, ‘Hey, this is what we want, how can we work with you guys to make this happen?'” he said.
When appointing his executive committee, Johnson will select the best people for the job, he added.
Rice has two requirements of people he appoints. “One [is] that they care about students and they care about students enough to give their input and voice their opinion about things. The second thing I care about … is people that are willing to work hard.”
Interaction with city
Johnson’s first obligation would be to find out what students need and want and take that to the city.
“A lot of times we think of Starkville and Mississippi State as two separate entities, so I guess I’m sort of one of the people that would be the bridge … between those two entities,” he said.
Johnson thinks the idea of a non-voting student alderman, which has been suggested in the past year, is a good one because it’s important to have a student at every meeting to remind city officials of students’ needs, he said.
Rice said he discovered through research that it’s not legally possible to have a non-voting student member on the Board of Aldermen, but he plans to keep working on creating an official student advisory committee within the city in which students and city officials will come together to talk about student needs.
“One of my priorities as president will be to make sure that initiative is followed through on and that it becomes an official city commission,” he said. “I’ve always had the belief that students can and should impact city decisions.”
Among other MSU-Starkville projects, Rice plans to work to make the Night Route more efficient and effective and run to apartment complexes around Starkville in addition to campus.
“I like it because it promotes night life … but in a safe way,” he said.
Bulldog Bash is a major project the SA and the City of Starkville work together to produce, Johnson said, and he wants to keep the relationship open. He also wants to continue community service projects begun by current SA President J.R. Love.
“Those are two good things to keep building on,” Rice said.
Relationship with administration
Both Rice and Johnson have worked extensively with the Mississippi State administration in their roles in the SA and other organizations.
Rice feels lucky that MSU has a student-friendly administration that cares about what students think, he said.
“The role that I will play with the university administrators is not as a student speaking with an administrator but as a peer speaking with a peer, that we’re all trying to solve the same problems and the same issues,” Rice said.
He’d handle disagreements with the administration by trying to resolve it internally without bringing in outside parties, he said, but if he feels the only way to accomplish something very important is to openly speak about it, he will.
Johnson is proud of spending the last two years working with the administration as president of the BSA, he said, and will handle any disagreements he may have with the administration professionally, by voicing his opinion and having good information to back it up.
The administration, while it is open, could improve on having open discussions with students not involved in campus leadership, he said.
“Student leaders don’t necessarily have the [input] of regular students, and they [administrators] tend to come to the student leaders quite frequently,” Johnson said.
But “the biggest thing right now is just to keep them on our side and constantly keep them informed of student opinions,” he said.