By Benjamin Strawbridge
Staff Writer
March 25, 2018
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As the 2018 UNH Senate Election rapidly approaches, more news and faces emerge from the halls of Undergraduate Student and Graduate Student Senate. As contestants for Student Body President and Vice President for the UNH Student Senate, sophomore Political Science major Joseph Ramirez and junior Civil Engineering major Thomas Libby, respectively, hope to go beyond the status quo and do what they believe will best benefit the student body. “As students, we don’t know what this position does for us, and I feel like a lot of the time, this position is always passed down,” Ramirez said in a March 7th interview with The New Hampshire, “and I want to create an environment where students can actually see that anyone can run for this position and have a say in what happens in this university and not just the kids who…have a place in the administration.” Ramirez added that he, in contrast to his opponents, has a “rare perspective” gained from exploring campus and making new connections and friendships, stressing that he feels “closest to Student Body than I will a year from now.” Ramirez was additionally motivated by the fact that, before he declared his candidacy, only two candidates were on the ballot (Ethan McClanahan and Jake Adams for president and vice president, respectively), believing that “that can’t happen.” If elected Student Body President, Ramirez promises to head a “Student-Led Student Senate” as he runs a campaign and platform that is “all about the students,” adding that it is harder to directly ask students what they want out of the assembly than it is to say, in Ramirez’s view, “this is what we can do…these are things we have talked to the administration about,” stressing that UNH best functions when it “runs” on the word of the students directly. “I think the biggest thing to be a good leader is to be transparent,” Vice-Presidential candidate Libby said. “If you’re doing stuff secretly, quietly, you can’t accurately represent the people because you’re trying to hide what you’re doing; so I believe that everything we do should be out in the open…we want them to feel like they can approach us at any time of day with a problem and then we’ll work with them.” “What needs to be happening is we have to get the students to give a damn again,” Ramirez added; “…we need to have strong leadership, but strong leadership that isn’t beholden to anyone but the students.” In Graduate Student Senate Election news, Communications Officer Jacob Bennett offered an update and correction to The New Hampshire’s March 1 election story, adding that, according to a March 5 email obtained by The New Hampshire, Garrett Cypher, who is a student in the MBA program on campus, is running for the position of GSS Student Body President in addition to other potential write-in candidates. Moreover, Bennett stated that in the March 1 article, he was, per the email, “not endorsing one candidate over any other,” and that his objective was “to broadcast the fact of the elections, and to encourage all eligible graduate students to cast votes for their representatives in our deliberative body.” The New Hampshire apologizes for any excluded or inaccurate information concerning the March 1 election report.
Originally published for The New Hampshire online on Mar. 25, 2018.