At the beginning of last semester when The Daily Campus began its video segment, “Student Senate in a Minute,” our staff recalled senator campaigns that hoped to foster transparency. Many candidates cited student news organizations, like The Daily Campus, as a way to act on that campaign promise.
Through “Student Senate in a Minute,” reporters with The Daily Campus provide students, who may be unfamiliar with Student Senate proceedings, with a look at what happens every Tuesday afternoon in the Senate’s chamber. This election season, The Daily Campus hopes to build on that impactful reporting, spurring a more conscious campus who feels kinship with their student representatives.
In the past, The Daily Campus operated like other newsrooms, giving their own endorsements for Student Senate elections. David Huntley, who spoke at this year’s Black Excellence Ball and served as SMU’s first Black student body president from 1978 to 1979, recalled his endorsement from The Daily Campus. Our staff discussed the logistics of restarting newspaper endorsements, ultimately deciding it may pose a conflict of interest.
While The Daily Campus has chosen to forego endorsements, we do not give up on our dedication to transparency in our reporting. Our Senate Elections Board, composed of Katie Bergelin (Editor-in-Chief) , Melanie Jackson (Managing Editor), LuLu Garnett (Newsletter/Copy Editor), Camila Trevino (Social Media Editor) and Darcy Bass (General Assignment Reporter), sat down with candidates running for secretary. Both candidates received the same set of questions and gave the following answers.
Crystal Smith
A rising senior double majoring in business management and art history, and minoring in photography and history.
Daily Campus: What’s one initiative you’ve pursued during your time in Senate? How does that initiative impact students or how will it impact students?
Crystal Smith: Currently, something that I’ve been working on and have loved this year is that I currently serve as the director of sexual assault prevention. It’s been something that hits really close to home as a survivor myself. Getting to table and spread information and resources to the student body. We’re currently in the works with some Greek houses to do events with them, educate them on resources that they can access as well as preventative measures by handing out drink covers. I also wrote legislation this fall semester where I got to reprioritize some of our efforts with the director of sexual assault prevention position more onto campus because it had historically been focused on outside venues. I really wanted to bring the effort back home to campus and impact students right where we live.
DC: What’s one group or area of campus you feel needs more representation and how will you bring them into the conversation?
Smith: I would love to represent more of the smaller clubs on campus, especially because there are so many students in these clubs with anywhere from 20 to 50 people that aren’t as seen as much as Student Foundation and Program Council. I’ve been a part of both of those and have loved my experience and loved my experience in bigger organizations such as Greek life, I think there’s a ton of representation that needs to be found in more niche clubs. We as a student body do have very varied and niche interests that should be seen as a whole, instead of just parts and segmented off from regular campus life.
DC: What’s one faculty relationship you’ve honed during your time in Senate and how has that relationship benefitted you in your time in Senate?
Smith: I’ve bonded so much with our Senate advisers. They are amazing people who I’ve been able to go to when writing legislation and different announcements that I have, consulting them first. They are so great, Sean Murphy, Nicole Morris, our advisers that come sit in on every single chamber. I’m a part of the organizations committee as well in Senate, and they come and sit in for every single meeting we have to really try to understand the student body’s needs. We’re helping approve campus charters for clubs, making sure they’re ready to take a spot on campus, giving them more resources like how to apply for funding and what to do in those kinds of realms. Our Senate advisers have been amazing with that and they are the most wonderful people, and I’m so happy I can work with them this year. I’d love to expand my relationship with them next year as well.
DC: What specific policies or initiatives do you plan to introduce if elected?
Smith: My biggest project I’d like to implement as secretary is two new director positions, because as holding a director position myself, I’ve seen the impact it can have on students on a one to one basis and as a whole. I’d like to incorporate a director of health and wellness to really promote some of our underutilized mental health resources, introduce programming with the Dedman gym and intramural sports. Get more students involved in those and really prioritize those efforts on campus, as well as the director of buildings and grounds because sometimes when you’re walking around between your academic buildings, a light’s out or maybe a door is slightly broken. Issues like that don’t get reported necessarily by students, especially when you utilize STABLE. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to report anything broken in your own dorm room but I’ve had to many times, and I feel like not everyone’s gonna go out of their way to do that. Having someone dedicated to finding those issues and making sure SMU facilities get to know about those is something super important to me, as well as making sure campus safety is a top priority for Student Senate. That’s something I really want to see happen and I feel like those goals are definitely very realistic, especially as a secretary. You’re in a supportive role especially and I’d like to support the rest of the student body.
DC: Besides The Daily Campus’ initiatives to show what goes on within the Senate chamber, how do you plan to keep students informed about Senate decisions and initiatives?
Smith: I’m so glad you asked me that because one of my biggest campaign promises is that I want to increase transparency even further within Student Senate. Secretary is the role where you’re recording your meeting minutes, you’re making sure everything gets out to the students. You’re in charge of the communications chair, so you are the one making sure news gets out to the student body, besides The Daily Campus. As secretary, I would love to work with you guys [The Daily Campus] to continue spreading this information.
I want us [Student Senate] to be as transparent as possible. I want to bring more students in, besides just journalism students, to come sit in on chamber. You get to learn so much about how government works through a mock Senate. It’s been so educational for me and my own understanding of the political sphere.
I also want to make sure our website stays updated every time we pass a new piece of legislation. I know, historically, we have been a little late to posting legislation. The two pieces I had personally passed got posted two months later. I want to make sure as soon as we pass it [legislation] and we get the word out, we can put it on our Instagram, on our website and make sure students actually know about the good work that we are doing.
Ian Stripe
A rising senior studying management science and data science.
Daily Campus: What’s one initiative you’ve pursued during your time in Senate? How does that initiative impact students or how will it impact students?
Ian Stripe: Last spring, I ran for vice president. One initiative I talked a lot about was digital student IDs. Even without that position, I still worked on that. Luckily for me, I’ve been on the Chief Information Officer Student Advisory Board for all my three years here at SMU. Last fall, I worked on how to compile a survey to push out to students. This spring, we finally pushed that survey out to students and understand their input on digital student IDs like how often do they use your ID in general places, and whether you want digital ID or physical ID. We have over 1200 responses and 87% of students preferred digital student ID.
DC: What’s one group or area of campus you feel needs more representation and how will you bring them into the conversation?
Stripe: Multicultural organizations, for sure. You hear about the events if you know someone in that organization. So I know they offer them like a lot of different times in Hughes-Trigg. Perhaps even like having Greek life mentioning those different events in their chapter meetings, and also our student athletes and bringing them in conversation. Just having a little bit of collaboration together.
DC: What’s one faculty relationship you’ve honed during your time in Senate and how has that relationship benefitted you in your time in Senate?
Stripe: I’d say Sean Murphy, director for Student Center and Activities. He’s been our Senate adviser for the past two years. This current semester, I dropped my Senator spot because of a class conflict and I’m only director of sustainability. He and I make time to have meetings about talking about different issues, such as the digital ID survey, and now airport shuttles.
DC: What specific policies or initiatives do you plan to introduce if elected?
Stripe: The digital ID survey closes tonight [April 7], so it’s still accepting responses until tonight. and I’ll speak with the chief information officer to understand what’s the feasibility, what’s the timeline looking like and how we will be able to implement this because there’s still some buildings that don’t fully take digital IDs. For airport shuttles, I’m talking with Sean about what partners do we currently have that could possibly provide a service, and if not, then who could go to afterwards?
DC: Besides The Daily Campus’ initiatives to show what goes on within the Senate chamber, how do you plan to keep students informed about Senate decisions and initiatives?
Stripe: I also talked about this last year, but doing weekly office hours. I’ll provide some sort of time slot. However, I’d rather just tell students I want to offer weekly office hours so call, text me or email me at your earliest convenience.
