The 75th Session of the Texas A&M Student Senate convened on April 6 for its first meeting, electing and swearing in new chairs for three of the seven committees, leaving three committee chairs to be filled at the next meeting.
The first election was for Finance chair, for which Agriculture and Life Sciences Sen. Cade Conrad, an agricultural economics freshman, ran unopposed. A main point of Conrad’s platform was continuing the Finance Committee’s work with organizations who receive funding from the committee.
“I want to continue our involvement past allocation,” Conrad said. “I want to increase committee involvement throughout the entire session and seek to provide funding for organizations and events that create positive impact”.
Conrad was elected with a vote of 50-0.
The next election, proving to be the most contentious of the night, was the race for the Constituency Affairs chair. Both Marcus Glass, biomedical engineering sophomore, and Joshua Benson, meteorology junior, were nominated for this role. After the first round of voting ended in a tie, Glass was elected by a vote of 27-26.
Both senators ran on similar platforms, wanting more outreach to students and to more widely promote Student Senate’s mission. Benson specifically said he wants to raise awareness of elections and the advocacy Student Senate provides.
“If we’re going off voting numbers, we can say about 14% of the students vote in the elections,” Benson said. “But what percent of that 14 knows what Senate does, knows what we do, how we advocate for them and represent them?”
Glass suggested more Senate outreach in the form of open houses, tabling and working with organizations affiliated with different colleges, such as the Student Engineers’ Council for the College of Engineering.
“I want to work with the members of the committee to identify those major organizations that really have a pull and are able to cater to a large amount of our student population,” Glass said. “What does that mean? I’m talking about [Memorial Student Center] Open House and open houses in general for the colleges, going out and actually speaking with our constituents. That is a big thing that I think this role has been lacking.”
The final race of the night was for Diversity and Inclusion Committee chair. Michael Garcia, political science and horticulture junior, and incumbent Tiffany Ufodiama, the Diversity and Inclusion chair for the 74th Session and a political science sophomore. Garcia won this race by a vote of 37-21.
Garcia ran on a platform of continuing to build diversity on campus, specially mentioning A&M’s naming as a Hispanic Serving Institution as something that he wanted to continue to build on.
“We’ve just been named Hispanic Serving Institution,” Garcia said. “That is a big thing for us. I think that displays how we are a diverse environment.”
At the next meeting, scheduled for April 20, the Community Relations, Academic Affairs and Student Services chairs will be elected, wrapping up the elections for committee chairs for the 75th Session.