Ex­ec­u­tive Stu­dent Coun­cil Elec­tions Held Last Week

MISHAWAKA—The ex­ec­u­tive stu­dent coun­cil elec­tions were held on March 26. There were two sets of can­di­dates that ran this year. It in­cluded pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Zach Kern, with his vice pres­i­dent nom­i­nee be­ing Ash­leigh Neier, and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Josiah Owens, with his vice pres­i­dent nom­i­nee be­ing Life Granville. Both side were heav­ily ac­tive on so­cial me­dia and posted fly­ers around cam­pus. One of the biggest rea­sons for this is to bring aware­ness to the stu­dent coun­cil. 

“I think both sides want to win this elec­tion,” Neier said. “So one side does some­thing and the other side will counter. We re­ally want to make it known that the stu­dent coun­cil is hold­ing an elec­tion. For in­stance, when I ran last year, I would talk to peo­ple and they did­n’t know that there was an elec­tion go­ing on. So just mak­ing sure that the stu­dent body knows what is go­ing on is very im­por­tant to both sides.” 

One of the key themes that the Kern-Neier duo is run­ning on is their ex­pe­ri­ence. Both Zach Kern and Ash­leigh Neier have served on the Un­der­class­men Stu­dent Coun­cil. Neier was the for­mer un­der­class­men pres­i­dent, and Kern was the for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the un­der­class­men coun­cil.  

“One of the biggest things that we are run­ning on is bring­ing back past events,” Neier said, “For in­stance, the stu­dent coun­cil held the Christ­mas party for a num­ber of years, but they dropped it, and then stu­dent ac­tiv­i­ties dropped it. So we re­ally just want to bring that back. An­other one of our key points is our ex­pe­ri­ence. Both Zach and me have been on the stu­dent coun­cil so we know how it works.” 

On the other side of the bal­lot are Josiah Owens and Life Granville. They are run­ning on three main points: God-cen­tered, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and con­nec­tion.  

“We want to make sure every­one is on the same page with how the cam­pus works,” Granville said. “Whether it be the sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion with how the cam­pus works, or just a gen­eral flu­id­ity be­tween the stu­dent coun­cil and the stu­dent body. Along with that goes be­ing God-cen­tered. We want to make sure that God is the cen­ter of what we do. At Bethel there are peo­ple that are turned off when it comes to God, and we want to help them ex­pe­ri­ence God for them­selves.” 

One of the ma­jor goals for both cam­paigns was bring­ing aware­ness to Stu­dent Coun­cil. Both sides made it very ap­par­ent that, win or lose, bring­ing aware­ness was the most im­por­tant thing. The Stu­dent Coun­cil makes count­less de­ci­sions for the stu­dent body, in­clud­ing plan­ning events, tak­ing care of is­sues around cam­pus and much more.  

“Hav­ing not run for the stu­dent coun­cil be­fore, we wanted to make the stu­dent coun­cil more well known,” Granville said. “Be­fore I started the process of run­ning, I did­n’t know what stu­dent coun­cil was, and that was up­set­ting to me. I wanted to know what they were do­ing and make an im­pact around cam­pus in a mean­ing­ful way.” 

Zach Kern and Ash­leigh Neier won the elec­tion. For more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the Bethel Uni­ver­sity stu­dent coun­cil, you can visit their In­sta­gram page @bu_s­tuco.