Jacob Taylor, a freshman at UW-Whitewater at Rock County will be representing both Whitewater and Rock County campuses through his new position on WSG.

“I’m eager to get into the flow of things,” said Taylor.

Taylor hit the ground running in student government in his freshman year as he is currently the leader of the College Democrats at Rock County in addition to his senatorship in Whitewater.

“When I heard about the election, I thought ‘well I think I could do good, I think that I could represent Rock County,” Taylor said.

Throughout his term, Taylor hopes to bridge the gap between both campuses and ensure students at Rock County feel supported by WSG and other services available.

“My main goal is to just represent their values,” said Taylor. “Anything I can do to make this transition from our campus to Whitewater easier.”

WSG President Tom Kind congratulated Taylor on his feature at Monday’s meeting and expressed excitement to have both campuses represented.

“We’ve been working on how we will see the future of this student government, and this is the first fulfillment of that,” said Kind. “I’m very excited that things are moving forward.”

Throughout the restructuring of WSG to integrate UW-W at Rock County’s student government, which comes after the official UW system restructuring of all two-year colleges merging into the nearest four-year universities in July 2018, the two student government bodies have been working closely to determine the best way to work together.

“We have been meeting with the two student governments to figure out how can we be inclusive,” said Janine Peterson, student life and events coordinator at UW-W Rock County.

The restructuring of the two student governments now allows for two student senators from the Rock County Campus to serve as part of WSG and represent their satellite campus.

“It’s a way to bridge that gap and to make sure we have some connection between the two campuses,” said Peterson. “He’s (Jacob) the first one (dual senator) in the system. It’s pretty exciting.”