This is the second part in a series looking at the Missouri Students Association presidential slates and their platform positions. This article focuses on the candidates’ positions on diversity.
**Billingsley-Kooi**
Before candidate Xavier Billingsley announced his intention to run for the Missouri Students Association presidency with running mate Helena Kooi, he had firsthand experience working with diversity at MU. Billingsley served as both the diversity program coordinator for the Mizzou Alumni Association and as diversity program recruiter for the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. As part of the Billingsley/Kooi platform, the MSA hopefuls want to help unite MU students through a restructured One Mizzou program.
“Diversity issues and social justice issues are really important to me,” Billingsley said. “We want to educate students on what One Mizzou really is. It’s not just an athletic slogan, and it’s not just a phrase, but it’s actually something that’s really meaningful here on our campus.”
Billingsley said he wants to hold a One Mizzou week in which students can learn about the initiative from guest speakers and participate in activities. In the MSA budget, $5,000 has been allocated for the One Mizzou program this year.
“Hopefully we can use the new budget to bring in speakers here on campus,” Billingsley said. “Maybe in the future, we can build our budget to bring in a concert to really bring students together and feel the spirit of One Mizzou. We always talk about how it’s not a melting pot. We can all be different and be diverse and still have a common love and a common bond for MU.”
The One Mizzou week would also include peer education to help teach students about different cultures present on campus.
“It’s not an issue of tolerance,” Billingsley said. “Its actually an issue of learning how to accept others for who they truly are and what they can truly be.”
**Bruer-Cartee**
To promote diversity on campus, the Everett Bruer and Lexie Cartee slate would add hate crimes to the list of punishable offenses on all UM System campuses and would add a diversity intensive course requirement at MU. Bruer and Cartee would also support One Mizzou.
The slate hopes to add language about hate crimes to the Student Code of Conduct, which applies to all UM System schools.
“The specific language that we’re trying to change in the M-book right now, the stuff that they can punish students under, is under the Student Code of Conduct,” Bruer said.
Bruer said the idea is similar to the slate’s plan to add language regarding sexual misconduct to the M-book, just on a larger scale.
Bruer has been working to add a diversity intensive course to MU’s general education requirements for over a year, he said.
“I’ve been working on the diversity intensive course requirement for over a year,” he said.
Bruer said he and Cartee would make the course work for students.
“If it’s fine-tuned in the right way, I think it would be a benefit for students,” Bruer said.
Bruer also said he hopes to help One Mizzou grow in the coming year.
MSA does not run the program, but Bruer said it has resources and volunteers to offer for One Mizzou.
“As long as they make sure every student background has a seat at the table, I think they should be fine,” he said. “I’m looking forward to being involved.”
**Loeffler-Damico**
An important part of Greg Loeffler and Lauren Damico’s election campaign is diversity. Loeffler said diversity is more than just ethnicity to him.
“The way Lauren and I both see it is that diversity is about people from different areas, different cultures and different backgrounds,” Loeffler said. “That’s incredibly important to this campus and to the world in general.”
One Mizzou, which Loeffler helped create, is another facet of their campaign. The task force encourages students to speak up for more diversity and more acceptance at MU, Loeffler said.
“MU has made great strides in making that true already, but there’s always room for improvement,” he said.
Loeffler wants gender-neutral housing on campus in order to be more accepting to fellow students. He said that plans for this type of housing are in progress in Residential Life, but wants to see this plan all the way through.
The two also want to make improvements to MU policy. The current language in the M-book outlines sexuality, race and religion as groups that cannot be discriminated against, Loeffler said.
“Nowhere in (the M-book) does it mention transgendered individuals,” he said. “It’s an area that campus needs to look at to make sure that those individuals are represented.”
Diversity is the first topic mentioned on Loeffler and Damico’s website. They chose it because it is a topic that needs to be discussed at MU, Loeffler said.
“It’s something that not a lot of people want to talk about,” he said. “It’s time that we do talk about those things and that we do begin a difficult dialogue.”
