Jacob Addington was re-elected to his position of Missouri Students Association senate speaker March 12.

This will be Addington’s second term as Senate Speaker, his first term starting in April 2018.

“The re-election process followed the same election procedure,” Addington said. “We had the nominating procedure, where anyone can be nominated to run. I was nominated and ran unopposed the following full senate because no one else was nominated. It was shorter than the typical election process because of how no one else was running against me.”

Addington said he plans to continue his role in building connections with the MU community, focusing specifically on senate connections with other student communities throughout his term next year.

“Last year, we really focused on building relationships with people outside of MSA, a lot of those relationships we built were with administrators, so I think this year we want to focus more on student organizations,” Addington said.

Citing his knowledge and experience of the position already, Addington said the continuation of his role poses fewer obstacles than that of a new individual taking it on.

“There’s a bit of a learning curve whenever you move into a new position, so I’ll already have a lot of those barriers lessened in a sense and because I’ve already been doing it for a year I already know what sort of works and what doesn’t,” Addington said. “Having connections is really important and I won’t have to build new relations with any administrators so that’s really helpful.”

Addington said the re-election process was relatively easy and shorter than usual, as he was the only candidate up for election.

Addington believes the senate will have a strong start next year due to the entire legislative cabinet returning to their positions next year.

“We’re excited to see where it will go since we have a lot of people rejoining leadership roles in senate,” Addington said. “It should be a really good year for us.”

_Edited by Ethan Brown | ebrown@themaneater.com_