Lulu Seikaly

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lulu Seikaly and I’m a junior political science and French double major and I would be honored to serve as your student body vice president. This past year, I’ve had the honor as serving as the Student Senate speaker.

As soon as I set foot on SMU’s campus, I was involved in leadership activities. I was one of 50 first-years chosen to participate in the Emerging Leaders program. Soon after I was chosen to be the Sing Song Chair for Program Council. I had the opportunity to work closely with many organizations that were competing in Sing Song. I held this position for two years.

I am now serving as the vice president of Social Programming for Program Council. This year I have had the honor of serving as the vice president of the French Club. I am also involved with SMU’s Mock Trial team. At the end of last year, I was elected Dedman II senator and was nominated and voted in by my peers to be the speaker. I am extremely involved on campus and have an array of experience with different student organizations as well as people.

People who know me can tell you that I love people. When I walk into a room, I want to meet everyone and know who they are. I am a firm believer in face-to-face interaction. I believe that it is the most effective way to relay messages to people. Senate right now is taking a passive role when it comes to finding out what students want us to relay to the administration. Senate needs to take a more active role in finding out what the student body wants so their years at SMU will be enjoyable and memorable.

Senate needs to find out what the student body wants, not just sit back and wait for issues to unravel. One way to accomplish this is that I want to work closely with the Encore chair (the new W.O.W.) and get the senators out to a couple of events so the first-years know who Senate is the minute they set foot on campus.

I want to show the student body that people in senate are students who take classes like they do. They are approachable, and they are just people like everyone else. I would also like to strengthen ties between the students, Student Senate, and the administration.

I would really appreciate your vote today and Thursday. I think that with my organizational skills, my approachable personality, and my communication skills, I can be a great vice president!

Let’s make history. Vote Lulu for VP! It’s your destiny!

Lulu can be reached at [email protected].

Rachel Simpson

My name is Rachel Simpson and I’m running for student body vice president. First, and most importantly, I want to encourage everyone to vote any time today or tomorrow before 7 p.m.

An important part of my platform has been my desire to make student concerns known to Senate so we can properly address them. These elections are a vitally important first step to begin that process. If you do not vote, you have no authority to question Senate operations. However, if you do vote, you are already on your way to getting your concerns heard on campus.

That being said, you should vote for me because I will continue to solicit your opinions in an effort to improve the embarrassing Pound the Pavement statistic that only 20 percent of students polled knew how to get their issues heard. In particular, my ideas include a central bulletin board on campus for Senate and other organizations, as well as improved advertising space throughout campus and an easily accessible poster in first-year residence hall rooms with important Senate contacts.

I want it to be as easy as possible for students to share ideas and concerns with Senate. The second part of my campaign is related in that with all the new ideas we will be receiving, I want to make sure that we actually have authority with the administration to get stuff done.

A lot of the battles we fight now in Senate include writing legislation “encouraging” the administration to consider an issue or “urging” the administration to review its policies. These rarely get past the idea stage and into practice. With more adamancy, we will impact its decisions.

Lastly, I want to address my previous leadership experience in Senate that makes me the ideal candidate for the job. In the fall, I was elected first-year Senator and have served in that capacity for the last five months. In that time, I wrote a piece of legislation that restructured Senate by creating an internal request form for advertising.

This task required me to research the Senate Constitution to find a suitable model for internal requests which I modeled after the budget request form. My research also included soliciting the expertise of some older senators already familiar with the constitution. This task proved to invaluably augment my knowledge of the internal structure of Senate.

I know that with my knowledge of how Senate works internally, I can more efficiently effect change externally. If elected I promise that you will know what we are doing and we will be doing what you want.

Remember: The solution in still simple. Vote Simpson for vice president.

Rachel can be reached at [email protected].