Cassie LaJeunesse, Campus Carrier Staff Writer
Last week, Berry elected new officers to the Student Government Association’s executive board. Junior Kassie Jones will serve as next year’s SGA President, with sophomore Marc McLendon as vice president of service, sophomore Milton Tama as treasurer and freshman Anna Katherine Drew as secretary.
Jones, who has served as SGA’s executive secretary for the past two years, is very excited to work with this new team and looks forward to making SGA more accessible to the student body.
“I love Berry so much,” Jones said. “I love the students, and I love the administration, and I love being able to help the two communicate.”
This communication between students and administration is something that Jones wants to strive for in her time as president of SGA. Her biggest focus will be providing more transparency between students and administration. She said that this year, students have raised concerns about the change process being slow when they bring issues to SGA and the administration.
“I want students to feel like we can get change done,” Jones said. “I don’t want anyone to feel like their voice is hindered.”
She wants to effectively explain committees to the student body so that students know what each committee does and why each is important. Jones thinks it is important that students be aware of SGA’s ability to form a committee to address issues that the students bring forward. She believes that this will help students better know how to affect change.
Jones also wants to make herself as accessible to the student body as possible. She wants students to be able to approach her with problems and to help them search for solutions.
“I’ve always been told that change starts with one person, and it does,” Jones said.
Accessibility is something that Drew wants to focus on as well. As freshman class secretary this year, Drew feels that she has become familiar with the freshman class, so she hopes that serving on the executive board will allow her more familiarity with the whole student body.
“I want to be super present,” Drew said. “I want to make it part of my job to be at sporting events and a lot of the bigger events and put myself out there so that I can get that reach.”
McLendon, Tama and Drew are all new to SGA’s executive board. Tama is confident that the team will be successful next year.
“I think that together as a team we will excel,” Tama said. “I’m really looking forward to seeing all that has to come.”
McLendon wants to focus on getting the school more involved with service, especially Berry’s blood drive. He hopes to get more students involved by incentivizing service. He has always been passionate about service and is excited to help Berry students be more involved.
“I’m excited to help people. I can’t wait to see the impact that our service brings,” McLendon said. “Not much feels better than serving other people.”