Missouri Students Association held its Fall Senatorial Election Announcements in The Shack on Nov. 7. TJ Benoist, chairman of the Board of Elections Commissioners, announced for all those who ran and won a seat.
“Senators play a really important role in our student government,” Benoist said. “They help allocate the money that MSA receives from the Student Fee Review Board. We allocate it to programs like Tiger Pantry, which provides food and clothing to students in need. We have Stripes … We have all kinds of auxiliaries that do really good work on this campus. The senators help form the voice of the student body.”
The Senate faces a duty to represent each school or college. This year, 19 candidates ran, five of whom were returners, with a maximum of 50 seats available. Each was allowed a seat.
This result broke a pattern in the elections. In years past, there were more candidates than seats available.
“This year, unfortunately, none of our Senate races were actually contested,” Benoist said. “Everyone who was on the ballot won a seat, which is great for the people who are running, but it’s not so great for representation and for getting our Senate to full capacity.”
Election officers changed promotion strategies this year to advertise the election. For the first time in a while, there were in-person voting sites as well as online voting. All students were allowed to vote within their own school or college. However, this did not produce the results election commissioners were hoping for.
“Simply scanning that QR code and voting, getting more people to turn out to vote only makes our association stronger because it makes our voice stronger,” Benoist said.
Academic seats are based on the number of students enrolled within the school or college to allow proper representation.
“Arts and Science and Trulaske, they have the most number of seats, 13 (and) 14, because they have the largest number of enrolled students,” said Ally Sharp, MSA Legislative PR Coordinator.
11 candidates won seats in the College of Arts and Science. They are John Bertoncin, Brayden Pirrung, Lucas Warren, Noah Schnarre, Ally Sharp, Nicholas Ruggeri, Lauren Holcomb, Amrya Walker-Whitlock, Cody Jenkins, Owen Powell and Addie Rezac.
The Trulaske College of Business gained three senators: Morgan Ribble, Kendall Watson and Gaby Van Winkle.
The College of Health Sciences elected Platinum Liang and Luis Cabellero.
The Sinclair School of Nursing elected Callan Wheeler and Julia Lipp.
The Missouri School of Journalism elected Jacob Miklas.
The College of Engineering, the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and the College of Education and Human Development did not receive any new senators.
Associate Justices Austin Lee and Silas Bloch administered the oath of office to swear in the new senators.
“What we really look forward to is expanding not only our audience, because we’re for the entire student body, but getting people in the Senate who are like me, who aren’t a poli-sci major, and who really maybe aren’t as well-versed in stuff like parliamentary pro and how to speak in the Senate but still want to have their voices heard and the voices of their constituents heard, and I think that’s what’s really special about academic senators,” Sharp said.
