Editor’s Note: This is part three in a three-part series on important issues in the upcoming SA presidential election. Full presidential candidate profiles will be published Friday.
The Student Association is a major force behind many campus events, and one of the major projects the group helps manage is the Homecoming celebration. Along with the omnipresent debate on whether Homecoming elections are decided based on race and Greek organization membership, debates have occurred in the past year over whether or not candidates for Homecoming positions should be allowed to campaign.
Tiffany Crawford said Homecoming candidates should be able to campaign for their positions. “If they are not able to campaign for themselves, how will people know them?” she said.
Keeyon Scott said next year’s Homecoming elections will show how the new campaign rules work out and that if there are any problems, the group will learn from it.
He also said he has mixed feelings about whether candidates should be sponsored by organizations. Having organizations sponsor candidates is a good idea, but he would like to see a more diverse array of organizations sponsoring candidates, he said.
Love said he would encourage students to run for Homecoming positions. “Campaigning-this should be done by students having a pride in this university coming over the next couple of years, and I think it will grow stronger and stronger,” he said.
Homecoming candidates should still be sponsored by organizations, Love said. “My personal philosophy is if a student gets involved in a club and gets happy with their college choice, that they’ll ultimately make that group or club, sorority or fraternity, stronger, and in the big picture, the student body’s going to be more united because of that foundation they have in that group,” he said.
Everybody and not a particular organization should be behind Homecoming candidates, Crawford said. This, she added, is one reason why campaigning is important.
Love said he is very supportive of having alumni involved in Homecoming. “This university is rich in alumni, and we need to make sure we represent them well,” he said.
“Homecoming needs to be solely Homecoming and nothing else going on,” he added.
Crawford said the SA could boost alumni involvement in Homecoming by alerting them early with newsletters.
Student Activities
Scott said he would like to continue events such as Old Main Music Festival and Bulldog Bash. “I want to try to make sure we’re doing what we need to do to make things happen here at Mississippi State like increasing student activities, but all of these things do cost money,” he said. “It seems like it’s become harder and harder, like less businesses are giving back to Mississippi State to fund Bulldog Bash and other things like that,” he said.
A student activities fee, something many other universities already have, might be beneficial to the university, he said. “I wouldn’t say that I would put a specific price on it, but if we do have one I think it’s something that should start off small and then continue to grow,” he said. Most of it should go back to the SA so that it can do things such as plan activities, give some to CAB and allocate the leftover money to various student organizations, he said.
The SA should to a lot of fundraising for events such as Old Main Music Festival and Bulldog Bash, Crawford said. “It’s one of our biggest events, so I think we should spend a good deal of money on it,” she said.
She said a survey asking what students want at Bulldog Bash would help improve the events. “Not a long survey, just something short, because they’ll be more apt to read it and want to participate in the survey,” she said.
Love said such events are great the way they are but that the SA needs to keep them strong. “We need to keep emphasizing that the Student Association puts them on, but it’s not without the help of the city of Starkville, as well as the student body,” he said.
When it comes to fundraising, “it all boils down to the core idea of making sure students that are here are happy with their college choice in Mississippi State,” Love said.
He said when students feel like they have a stronger voice, they will vocalize their opinions on what they want at such events, and that the SA needs to draw from their opinions. “They should offer recommendations,” he said.
SA Projects
The SA’s current projects need to be continued, and the group does not need to start new projects, Love said. “I don’t see any new projects going on. I think we have quite a few going on as it is. Let them develop, I think,” he said.
Crawford said the Night Route, one SA project, is a good idea. “The students-for the ones who live on campus who don’t really have cars and they need to go to Wal-Mart or somewhere, they have the privilege to go and spend an hour or so just to get the things that they need and be able to come back” without worrying about things like gas money, she said.
There is always room for new projects, Crawford said. “There’s always things that we could be doing in order to get the students involved,” she said.
She would like the SA to come up with activities that will affect everybody, she said. “We could do a make-a-difference week where we get everybody on campus together and one day we could do a coat drive, the next day we could do a canned food drive, or we can do Coats for Kids, or we can do Trikes for Kids, and we could just go out for the community and, we can take these events out to the community and get the community involved,” she said.
An activity Scott, a Gulfport native, would like to continue is Bulldogs in Response, a group that has traveled to the Coast since Hurricane Katrina to help with hurricane relief projects. “That’s something that I want to continue even if I don’t win president until I graduate: making sure that students are being able to go down there and get involved with hurricane relief, because I think that’s really important,” he said.
The SA has also worked hard on projects such as teacher evaluations, freshman year experience and The Junction, Scott said, projects he wants to continue. “I want to make sure that these projects that are going to be beneficial to all students are continued,” he said.
Another new idea Scott has is an event similar to Bulldog Bash or Super Bulldog Weekend that has the working name of Unity Fest. The point of the weekend would be to bring together the student body. “Since I’ve been here at Mississippi State, and I’ve been working on past campaigns and stuff, pretty much all of the candidates expressed concern about unity, kind of bonding all races and establishing various friendships between Greeks and non-Greeks here on campus, but actually I’ll be honest and say I haven’t seen a lot done with that,” he said.
The weekend might include bands, picnics and a unity ball. “Starting off, it might not be the most fabulous thing, but I feel like it’s a start,” he said.
On the Web
Scott said he would like to keep the SA Web site, www.msustudentassociation.com, updated to make sure students know the organization is being open. He would also like the Web site to be more student-friendly and allow students to leave feedback.
Crawford said the Web site is very important because it gives students the ability to log on and see what the SA is doing or read the Constitution.
Love said the Web site needs to be a vital tool of the SA. The SA needs “maybe a Web site that clubs and organizations can post their own events to. A student-friendly Web site,” he said. The Web site could also be used to let students know what goes on at Senate meetings and other SA events, he said.