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MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2016 | VOLUME 130 ISSUE 24
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
Caroline Fiss/KANSAN
Gabby Naylor and Stephonn Alcorn celebrate the announcement of their election as student body vice president and president and OneKU's overall Student Senate victory. respectively.
OneKU wins Student Senate election Stephonn Alcorn and Gabby Naylor take 90 percent of the student vote
▶ CONNER MITCHELL @ConnerMitchell0
Members of the Student Senate Elections Commission met Sunday to certify the results of the 2016-17 Student Senate election. On Thursday, Stephonn Alcorn and Gabby Naylor of the OneKU coalition defeated Richie Hernandez and John Castellaw of the CARE KU coalition for Student Body President and Vice President.
A total of 4,278 votes were cast, with a 19.25 percent student turnout. Jesse Burbank, chair of the Elections Commission, said the turnout was higher than last year's election, which saw a 17 percent voter turnout.
Alcorn and Naylor took the vote by a substantial margin, winning 90.6 percent to.39 percent.
All 51 of OneKU's senatorial candidates were elected to their respective classifications, as CARE KU did not run senatorial candidates with the Hernandez and Castellaw ticket.
The only academic classification with more candidates to run than seats available was Junior/Senior College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which had one independent candidate run.
Alcorn, Naylor, and the OneKU senatorial slate will take office April 27 during a Joint Senate meeting, when outgoing Student Body President Jessie Pringle and outgoing Student Body Vice President Chancellor Adams are scheduled to ceremoniously hand over their positions.
Alcorn said OneKU faced a challenge in demonstrating the viability of Student Senate to the student body as an inclusive and impactful student government.
"The hardest part of this campaign was having people re-believe that Student Senate was a body that represented them, that advocated for them, and that could matter and make decisions that fundamentally impacted their lives." Alcorn said.
One of the main initiatives the OneKU coalition ran on was a unified and secure relationship with members of the Multicultural Student Government, which was funded by Student Senate in March.
"I want there to be a relationship between Student
The hardest part of this campaign was having people re-believe that Student Senate was a body that represented them."
Stephann Alcorn incoming student body president
Members of the next Senate Executive Staff will also be named at the Joint Senate meeting, Naylor said. She added she wanted to thank Hernandez, Castellaw and the CARE KU coalition for a productive election season.
Senate and the Multicultural Student Government so that our efforts are cohesive, and
Naylor said several Holdover Senators, senators from the current Senate body, would be elected at the Joint Senate meeting April 27 to fill empty seats and have continuity between the changing Senate bodies.
so that we can advocate for students in the same spaces, and make sure students are working together to benefit everyone, and make sure that everyone's needs are centered," he said. "There's no way [administrators] can tell us no."
"I really thank them for sticking it out with us," she said. "It was a tough year on all parts for Student Senate and these elections, so it wasn't easy, and I know they worked just as hard as we did. So I really thank them for their efforts, and I hope to keep seeing them around."
Castellaw said he was proud of what the CARE KU coalition accomplished during the campaign in bringing to light issues within the current Student Senate processes.
"What I would say we got accomplished with this election cycle is we gave students who normally don't know what's going on in Senate the opportunity to hear what's going on, and see what are some issues we felt were a bigger problem that needed to be addressed and changed within Senate itself," he said. "Hopefully students are more aware of how they can be involved, especially when it comes to subcommittees and knowing that they are able to have voting rights in everything."
Currently a member of the Student Rights Committee, Castellaw said he plans to stay a part of Student Senate.
it comes to subcommittees," he said. "We'll see what kind of goes on from there, hopefully people will still want to be in contact with us, just about anything. I got to meet people in administration and got to be able to say, 'If you still need help with any of these things, we'll be here for you.'"
"I do plan on still being a part of Student Senate in any way possible, especially when
He congratulated Alcorn and Naylor, saying he hopes they will be able to enact change in Student Senate.
"I especially want to thank our whole coalition and all the students who helped us. Without them, we literally would not have even been able to campaign yesterday and today. So a big thank you to them," he said. "And congratulations to Stephonn and Gabby both, hopefully they'll be able to recognize a lot of the problems going on on campus and within Student Senate themselves, and they'll definitely be able to succeed."
- Edited by Brendan Dzwierzynski
Multicultural Student Government discusses plans at forum
► LARA KORTE
@lara_korte
The new Multicultural Student Government hosted its first open community forum last week to discuss their mission, plans and how students can get involved.
The meeting was led by MSG members Katherine Rainey, Jameelah Jones and Alex. Kinkead. Jones kicked off the conversation by reciting the group's mission statement.
The group was created early last month, when Student Senate approved a student fee bill that gave funding to many campus organizations and services.
In part, the statement said the purpose of the MSG will be to "foster a community of individuals committed to creating and maintaining a campus that reflects the needs of students, demonstrates inclusivity and exemplifies what it means to be a Jawhawk.
Rainey and Jones laid out what Rainey called a "baseline" plan for how the organization would work: an executive staff of eight people that will be constructed similarly to Student Senate.
Hannah Edelman/FANSAN Kat Rainey helps host the first open forum for the Multicultural Student Government.
"We're going to operate the way that a student government would, but with our new spin and our specific purpose and our specific goals," Rainey said. "I think the notion of centering multicultural students is just so different, it's literally never been done before, so by nature it's going to be
In addition to a different spin and focus, the structure of the MSG will differ from a traditional student government in several ways, one of them is the election process. Jones said the goal is to shift away from popular-vote models.
Positions on executive staff include president, vice president, chief of staff treasurer, community coordinator, graduate affairs and government relations officer.
different, and it's going to be set apart."
The election of MSG officers will be based on three parts that include a popular vote, an interview and community presentation. Apart from executive members, other government members will include senators that represent different academic departments as well as many underrepresented groups on campus. Examples included, but were not limited to, a seat for the
"Popularity contests have not proven helpful in deciding how people get elected," Jones said.
Black Student Union, the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, First Nation Student Association, ROTC, Spectrum and AbleHawks.
The government will also include four committees: event programming, finance, constitution and judicial review and student affairs.
Jones and Rainey said there are intentions for the MSG to work with and consult members of Student Senate, if need be, but the two will be "fundamentally different."
Rainey said it's not going to be possible to isolate the two groups, since many students involved in the MSG have friends in Senate and vice versa, and she said she hopes the two entities can communicate so they both are on the same page when it comes to University issues.
"I think it will be kind of impossible to keep our bodies separate, to keep us from talking and communicating," Rainey said. "We're inherently going to speak and, I hope, support each other."
Rainey said she has already had positive conversations with members of
the Student Senate Coalition ONEKU - who won the election just hours before the forum - on ways the two groups can better support each other.
SEE MSG PAGE 2
.