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 president. Both candidates received the same set of questions and gave the following answers.
Will Leathers
A rising senior studying business management and international studies with minors in sports management and Spanish
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?
Will Leathers: Two things that come to mind. One, we started the outdoor seating project in the Mary Hay, Peyton and Shuttles quad, which I think has been really beneficial. That’s something that comes to mind that’s straightforward—putting in chairs and tables—really setting up that area.
Number two would be with outreach this year. Coming up with the idea of not only seeing senators during the election season, but being able to see them all year long. I helped found the outreach committee this year, and helped co-lead it with Reese Mellor, our outreach chair. We reached out to over 100 different organizations here on campus, and we’ve had meetings with 60 plus different organizations. Those are projects that have been happening and then there’s a lot of stuff for the future, hopefully.
DC: What’s one group or area of campus you feel needs more representation and how will you bring them into the conversation?
Leathers: One group or area that needs more representation definitely would be student athletes outside of representation within the community, getting blasted out on our social media all the time, but getting that representation where they’re connected with other students and being able to be integrated more into our clubs and organizations here on campus. One way that I personally have gotten involved in boosting student athlete voices here on campus is becoming an intern with The Boulevard Collective, helping our students capitalize on their name, image and likeness, and being able to promote that.
I think that finding a way to integrate that with some events that are on campus, and having something that I can pitch to The Boulevard Collective to potentially do a collaboration with groups on campus that gets the student athletes more connected. I think there are other communities here on campus that are always needing a voice, and always want to have that. I always want to keep my door open for anyone to come up and talk to me.
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?
Leathers: Our advisor, [Sean] Murphy, is the main guy that comes to mind just because he’s been really helpful. One aspect that I’ve really worked with him has been through trying to get a civics and individual ethics (CIE) credit placed onto Senate. I’ve written the course proposal over this past year and we actually turned it into the office of general education, and we have been waiting on the response for that.
They’re [senators] spending 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. every Tuesday, and then 3:30 to 5 p.m. on a Thursday or another time of the week in a committee meeting, then they’re going out in the community. They’re doing all these things, committing a lot of time, so being able to at least get some sort of graduation requirement for that I think is going to be beneficial for our senators. They’re doing a lot that is towards CIE.
Being able to work with him [Murphy] on that project has been really great. I’m trying to fine tune it, make sure that it’s well prepared. We’ve been a little bit back and forth in discussions with the office of general education to make sure that it’s right. Hopefully by summer, or middle of summer, it’ll be complete and we’ll be able to finish it, and have it be able to be enacted for this next school year. Hopefully it will allow more people to run for Senate because they know that they can get that credit while allowing senators to free up some time. Ultimately, this is something that’s been really great working with a faculty member and being able to work on a project hand in hand.
DC: What specific policies or initiatives do you plan to introduce if elected?
Leathers: I want to help work on representation on campus. There’s one bill that we were discussing and presenting which would be reshaping how the seats are done.
Currently in Senate, there’s a graduate [student] preference. I’m in the Cox School of Business and there’s six seats for Cox currently. If a graduate student in Cox decides to run, and let’s say they get 25 votes and let’s say me as the sixth person got 1,000 votes behind five other undergraduates, the graduate student would be placed in the seat above me, even though he only got 25 votes. I think we are trying to find a way to tackle changing that preference and essentially separating out, these are the undergraduate seats and these are going to be some graduate seats that are set aside, which will then expand representation on Senate. That would be something that we have talked about doing. We presented on the floor and then we had to table it because it got too close to elections.
Another thing is creating a director of graduation, someone that can disseminate information for graduating seniors and be representative on campus. I feel like seniors I’ve talked to, there’s miscommunication about all the different ceremonies that go on, what all may be happening for graduation weekend or the big events that we have here on campus. Being able to have a student representative that’s in these meetings can be like, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on.’ Also having that person potentially lead like a class project. I walk around campus and you see a little plaque, a little garden, something that’s done, but finding a way to bring that back and have something that my class, Class of 2026, can start off with.
One of my big initiatives is communicating the traditions and things that are really important to us here on campus to the new administration that’s coming in. New provost, new athletic director, new president, there’s a lot of stuff that’s changing and so being able to do that, but also asking for things that students want. At some point we could ask about student input on who’s speaking at graduation. We can ask students about different policies regarding the Boulevard or different policies regarding whatever it may be on campus. Being able to see and understand what students are wanting and then I can then pursue with administration
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?
Leathers: I’ve been really excited to see all The Daily Campus in a minute. I think it’s done a good job about spreading information. Our new communications chair, Kathy Zeppos, has done a great job of working on a newsletter that’s been going out recently. I know there are other people that are talking on their platform about potentially releasing weekly newsletters, so finding a way to support those senators that may want to do initiatives such as that, or supporting having open office hours for discussions.
I think one way would also be through outreach. We’ve talked about how we have a policy where it’s one week of meetings and then another week of office hours where people come in. It’s a face-to-face check in. Just saying, ‘Hey, this is outreach office office hours. Any organization is welcome to stop by and hear about what’s going on in Senate.’ I know a lot of senators during their campaigns have been polling the room being like, ‘How many of you have been asked about a piece of legislation here,’ and usually maybe only two or three people ask about it. Finding a way to be like, ‘Hey, this is a big piece of legislation that has been presented,’ that we post on our social media or we find a way to basically have that in outreach like, ‘Hey, all of this week’s docket of legislation will be printed out for you in the outreach meeting. You can come and read it.’ Then you can get more student feedback.
Ultimately, that’s the way to do it. We send out our emails for HR, and we had to stop sending it through an SMU email because a lot of people just silence their notifications from anything that comes from the SMU address. We started sending it from personal email addresses. I think finding a way to do that where we’re not overdoing it, but it’s the right amount where the students that are interested can do it, but it’s not like students are putting the Student Senate Instagram or Student Senate email on silent because they get an email every week.
Markus Mortenson
A rising fifth year pursuing a master’s of science in mechanical engineering.
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?
Markus Mortenson: Within Student Senate, each senator has a general role in the student body to represent, but also within their school to serve as the liaison between the two. In my time as Lyle Senator, I’ve gotten the honor to serve and represent the engineering students, and some of those initiatives that we’ve gotten to see back when I joined Senate, filling a vacancy a year and a half ago. Jonathan [Thomas] and Reese [Mellor] were working on getting swipe access to [Lyle] buildings late at night because, with the changes in times for Fondren’s hours and the need for students to access Lyle computers and things at night, it was something we found was important. I don’t believe we got to extend the hours any longer than 10 p.m., but it opened up the discussion towards the greater Fondren hours. When that discussion came back through Senate and the head librarian came in and said, ‘Tell me what the student population says and what they need,’ we got to say, very firmly, from data that we’ve collected from students, that the Lyle students need somewhere to be doing school work at two, three in the morning.
Additionally, one of my largest initiatives was helping with the Undergraduate Council within Lyle. The idea is that with one student per major per grade level, we’ve got the opportunity to have pretty much a 10-student-to-one representative ratio, and everybody’s got 10 friends in school. You’re in charge of hearing from roughly 10 people, and then you bring those concerns to your Lyle senators and your Lyle senators then bring those concerns to the senatorial body, and it moves from there. We’ve seen a lot of success in terms of reaching the Lyle population. The hard part about that is we’ve got roughly 434 Lyle undergraduate students that we’ve reached and that’s less than the number of freshmen in Cox. We really want to and this kind of wraps into one of the things I want to do, is take the success of our initial Undergraduate Council, and wrap that into the other schools so that people feel heard and feel seen.
DC: What’s one group or area of campus you feel needs more representation and how will you bring them into the conversation?
Mortenson: I think that when we look at the concept of representation on campus, we’ve got a couple different areas. You’ve got within Senate, the decision–making group of the student body. You want them to be properly represented, especially in showcasing what it is that’s going on on campus. There’s a lot of groups that miss out on those kinds of things. One of my initiatives within this campaign is to ignite SMU spirit by bringing all students together by rallying around the fact that we’ve all got different interests that make each and every one of our SMU experiences unique. For me, it’s water skiing, Student Senate, Beta Upsilon Chi, those kinds of things are my interests, but I may have no overlap with the Chess Club or the different smaller engineering organizations. That includes gathering students outside of the Greek culmination on the Boulevard and outside of the family culmination and finding a place for them to enjoy their shared interest community on campus.
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?
Mortenson: Within Lyle, I’m really lucky, because we’ve got two representatives for the 400 students. I’ve got an even smaller class size of graduating engineers than I did at my high school, which I feel tight-knit with, which is cool to see.
One faculty relationship that I’ve gotten to lean into heavily is with Dr. Ben Zoghi, the executive director of the Lyle Hart Center, an electrical and computer engineering professor and associate dean for advanced studies. He’s new to SMU and he has led the initiative to bring leadership to SMU, so getting to kind of work with him as the guy who’s here for engineering leadership, coming from the position of the folks that are here to represent engineers and make them leaders has been really cool to see.
DC: What specific policies or initiatives do you plan to introduce if elected?
Mortenson: I’ve got three main points that I’ve kind of hit on a little bit. First and foremost, I want to connect the SMU campus, secondly, I want to ignite SMU spirit and finally, I want to launch bold and unique initiatives. All three of those mean absolutely nothing unless backed by actual projects, ideas and concepts. When it comes to connecting the campus, we’ve got to understand that Student Senate serves as the liaison between the administrative branch of SMU and the student body of SMU. Many students don’t even know that the funding for their student organizations that they sign up for on SMU360, go to meetings for and Hughes-Trigg and meet for events on Dallas Hall Lawn for, all those organizations receive funding through Student Senate. The administration takes the student fees, we get our portion into Student Senate, roughly $1 to $1.2 million, and we distribute those to all the student organizations. One of the main aspects of the Senate’s role in the student body is to serve as the communication piece to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem with this. Who do I talk to?’ Reach out to Senate, Senate connects you with your senator and your senator puts you in contact with your administrator that can address that. The one beginning initiative is to connect the campus by saying, ‘Hey, these organizations may not even know that they’re getting money from Student Senate, because it’s their money being redistributed to them.’ Second, a lot of people may not feel comfortable or know how to contact their senator. Recently, Reese Mellor and others have done a great job with outreach. I believe they reached roughly 80 of the 200 student organizations. They had a senator in those meetings, listening to concerns, taking the things that we’re accomplishing to them and connecting that bridge a little bit. I think that we need even more than that. We need to really lean into the House of Representatives concept, bringing student leaders together to discuss recent changes and the things that we need to be looking at. Also, on a greater scale, communicating what it is that Senate does and showing every student that their understanding of how Senate works is ideal to having a great student experience.
With the second initiative of igniting SMU spirit, one of the main things that my initiative contains is the idea of revamping the Boulevard. I think from having what is ranked in some places as the number one tailgating experience in Texas, we have a lot of great things that we do, a lot of traditions, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. I think, back to what I said initially, we’ve got the Greek sector up north, we’ve got the family sector down south, what do you really do if you’re not involved in Greek life and your family isn’t here, they’re in Missouri or Wisconsin, or California So kind of showing students that just because Cox has their little area doesn’t mean that it’s not open to students. They want Cox students together there. Lyle’s got its own area where students can go to gather, and see their friends and feel that shared interest community. That is the one thing that underlies this entire campaign is my love, appreciation and desperate pursuit of a shared interest community. Additionally igniting SMU’s spirit is welcoming organizations to collaborate and finding ways, outside of the Boulevard, how we can be doing events where typical groups that would be separate would come together.
Finally, to launch bold initiatives. We tend to all notice the same little issues, and so these bold initiatives are there to address those different issues. One of those is a portal—for student organizations. I know that we’ve got all of this infrastructure within STABLE and it’s all well established. I think that students just need a little bit of impetus, a little bit of guidance through those systems. A really fun idea [would be] to use the data center that SMU has on East Campus and develop our own internal SMU login-based AI chatbot where you can say, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in setting up an event on Dallas Hall. What kind of steps do I need to go through?’ I think that it would enable organizations to gather better and to know what kind of resources we have access to. Finally, expanding scholarship opportunities. I think that a lot of people we’ve even seen within Senate, the few Senate scholarships that we have and support financially through the endowment funds that we have access to within Student Senate, there’s a desperate need for more of that. I think SMU is one of the only peer and aspirational schools in our two lists that does not match or meet 100% of need. A lot of students don’t understand that $125,000 set aside at one point in time is enough to pay for a $5,000 scholarship every year. Obviously, we’re not coming across $125,000 every day, but in the case that we can find that money, be it in the weekly sweep at the end of the year, different financial avenues.
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?
Mortenson: Literally my first initiative, connect our campus. The problem with communication is that if it doesn’t happen, nobody knows that it doesn’t happen. You just saw TCU have a water main break and who do I see reporting on it, but the TCU on-campus media teams. To see that you all [The Daily Campus] are reporting on what Senate is doing in a minute, I have never had more people ask me about what senators doing since you all began doing that.
I think that communication is key and finding out in this balance of the chaos of SMU360, the mass amount of emails that we get all the time, the pervasive nature of social media and how we operate as students, how can we communicate with students in a way that’s effective and in a way that enables them to feel involved? Within Senate, one of the fundamental concepts here is we want the student body to feel heard. If I am voted as student body president and we come to the end of next year and you all were like, ‘The student body did not feel heard,’ then I would be failing at my job. The concept is that this governing body distributes funds, unites the campus and can make the changes to address those [concerns], if that student group is out of touch, what are we doing? So I think that the communication is key.
