We as students need to be more involved and attentive to our student government, more particularly student government elections. While it may seem easiest to either vote for your friends or pick random names on the ballot, it is important for us to pay attention to the candidates, their platform and how they’re planning to make positive changes in our community. With the right candidates in office, we can work to make Baylor a better place for everyone on campus.
Not only is it important to support students that are running for office, but to realize their impact on our experiences and resources at Baylor. Student government is the voice for all students, and they represent and fight on our behalf to make changes that can help us in all aspects of our college lives. These positions hold the power to impact our social, financial and academic lives at school, by working on different bills and interacting with the faculty and staff at Baylor.
With student government elections concluding this past week, it was a good opportunity for the Baylor community to reflect on the things that could be improved and the ways that we can go about doing so. On the surface, it may seem like most of the candidates are proposing similar ideas. But with their different levels of experience, visions and ideas, each candidate could bring different changes to campus.
While many of the candidates had a shared passion for increasing diversity and inclusion, by watching the debates and reading about each candidate’s platform, it is clear that each student had their own perspective on the issue and different ideas on how to tackle it. Without thoroughly looking into each candidate and what they stand for, students could be voting against their own personal beliefs or for a candidate that may not be best fit for the position.
Candidates voiced their hope to “bridge” the gap between student government and the rest of the student body. However, this cannot be done one-sided—we as students need to also put in the effort to create a better integrated student body with mutual support and equality between the students and leaders.
It may be easy to overlook these elections and the student government, but we are only hurting ourselves in doing so. These students have worked tirelessly to create their campaign and platform and deserve to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work by their peers. By getting more involved with the student government, we will not only help ourselves and our university, but those who have a passion to be the leaders that can make a change at Baylor.
