Thomas Kind, current Whitewater Student Goverment (WSG) vice president, and Hogan Veserat, current senator, described their campaigning experience as something of a balancing act.

“It was a roller coaster,” Veserat said. “I learned a lot from Tom especially, I learned a lot from all the different organizations around campus but it was definitely a good experience.”

WSG voted to approve new president Kind in their last meeting before Spring Break on Tuesday, March 14.

Kind and vice president, Veserat campaigned throughout the fall leading up to the annual debate and election.

Looking Ahead

Kind and Veserat centered their campaign on three priorities for campus, one being working to build the relationship between the student body and faculty.

Kind said the lack of student-faculty relationship was a frustration he’s heard voiced more often than anything else from student organizations on campus.

“Most people feel that they don’t know who’s in administration that they can work with them or they don’t know their resources,” Kind said.

The need to let students know about their resources and options coincides with their priority of sexual assault prevention and awareness.

“That’s a big part about working with sexual assault too is that they don’t know their resources,” Kind said.” Or you don’t know the
consequences of a resource, you don’t know what an action will do.”

Current WSG President Kane Poad is also working on ‘getting the ball rolling’ with sexual assault this semester.

Working with students and sexual assault prevention on campus, is something that Kind said will continue to be built on during his term as well as upcoming administrations.

In addition to fostering student-faculty relations, Kind and Veserat also hope to build campus and community relations.

Community organizations like the Downtown Triangle neighborhood reached out to Kind hoping to get to know each other and work together in the future.

The Triangle is also holding an election for a member of WSG to be on their board in order to be involved in community affairs.

Currently, re-structuring of the executive board is still going on in order to update the tasks of each position.

“We’re restructuring the e-board to be worthwhile and they aren’t just getting paid to sit there and look pretty or they aren’t just doing one small job,” Kind said. “They are doing a lot of things and that they are also able to build opportunities for students.”

Kind and Veserat have been sifting through notes from meetings with student organizations to see what they can accomplish.

“Your priority is our priority,” Kind said.

Poad has recently been working with issues involving parking on campus and the possibility of building a new parking lot in the future.

Poad will be president until July 1 before handing over the reigns to Kind.

Moving from deputy speaker to vice president and shortly president, Kind said his transition from the new administration will be seamless.

Veserat, on the other hand, will be taking on a bigger role than his previous position.

“For me obviously it’s a pretty daunting task going from one hour and some things on the side as a senator to 10 hours each week,” Veserat said. “I’m definitely looking forward to the opportunity to put my nose in the job and get it done, and hopefully Tom will be there to lead me along the way, it’ll be fun.”