ASLC Elects Members to Cabinet for the 2019-2020 Academic Year

As part of the election for the Associated Students for Lewis & Clark’s (ASLC) cabinet, a debate was held on March 7, with the only contested seat being for the presidency. Candidates running for cabinet positions were asked questions and candidates running for president engaged in a debate. The debate was moderated by Pioneer Log Editor-in-Chief Althea Billings ’19 and Managing Editor Natalie Rich ’19.  Of presidential candidates Helen Hitz ’21, Hannah Posey Scholl ’20 and Tom Stratton ’20, ASLC announced that Hitz won the election on March 14.

Elected ASLC president Hitz said that her experience being the former Feminist Student Union representative on ASLC, as well as being the Auditor this year, allowed her to take part in many important changes and movements during her time in ASLC.

“As the feminist student union representative, my first bill in ASLC was to get the Disabled Student Union a representative in senate,” Hitz said. “As President, I want to continue to promote accessibility and Diversity of both the ASLC and also LC as a whole.”

Hitz said that ensuring major decisions do not get passed without student input would also be one of her top priorities.

“As president I want to communicate with administration to make sure that things like the Counseling Center funding and the removal of DSAs will not happen without student input, that would be one of my main goals with my meeting with the President of the College and the Dean of Students,” Hitz said.

Stratton emphasized communal spaces in his platform and promised to work towards increasing ASLC communications with the administration, clubs and organizations.

“I think that having an atmosphere of connectedness is really important,” Stratton said. “During my time in ASLC it became really apparent that a lot of clubs were doing similar things, as well as administrative facets that could help with a lot of clubs actions. But, they just didn’t know about each other.”

Posey-Scholl noted that she was always available to listen to students and that pursuing change based on their feedback would be a top priority.

“I had heard that one student had a huge problem on one of the Pio buses with that driver that was driving way too fast,” Posey-Scholl said. “Since then we have gotten posters put up on the Pio buses so that you can contact the company if there is something going wrong, if the bus driver ran into something or if they are driving unsafely. I have also reached out to administration and talked to administration to see what they are going to do to follow up on that driver.”

Allison Behrens ’21, the incoming Chief Justice, said that her main goals are to continue facilitating “Know Your Rights” forums, increasing student union representation at these forums and continuing to update the ASLC constitution.

“If we have specific issues that people want to talk about that pertain to BSU (Black Student Union) or QSU (Queer Student Union) then it would be nice to have their input on that,” Behrens said. “I don’t think there is enough encouragement.”

Nick Gothard ’22, now Student Organizations Coordinator, aims to help make the budget allocations process easier to understand for clubs and organizations and wants to improve communication with the student body.

“As your Student Organizations Coordinator next year, I want to really focus on the progress that we made in (the position) this year, which is primarily through transparency and accessibility,” Gothard said. “The application to be allocated student fee money is more streamlined and more well put together than ever before. And I think building upon our progress while also increasing our accessibility is a really good goal to pursue.”

Shannon Drew ’20, the incoming SAAB Chair, said that she aims to spread more awareness about SAAB and help students fund their programs.

“Serving as the SAAB representative of this past year I have noticed a lot of things that are great about SAAB … and also some things that need to be streamlined and changed,” Drew said.

Returning to his position from the 2018-2019 school year, Treasurer William Witmer ’20 said that he wants to make things easier for his successor after he graduates and to get more people involved with his committee’s grant board.

“As returning treasurer I will build off of what I’m leaving behind for my successor, they will be able to know what they are supposed to do, because I was left in a position where a lot of things did not make sense and I kept learning things I should have been taught,” Witmer said. “Another thing I’m going to do is raise awareness for the finance committee that I run which is another grant board on campus, but it doesn’t have to be a purely academic reason, to sum up, it can be support for student projects.”

Maxine McCuller ’21, the incoming Vice President, expressed that one of her main goals is to receive more feedback from people outside of ASLC and to make ASLC more welcoming to those people as well.

“Including as many people as we can to get a larger range of opinions is one of my top priorities as V.P.,” McCuller said. “I think that something that people find unwelcoming about it is that, this may not be the right term to use but I’ve heard it described as kind of cult-like.”

The candidate for Community Service and Relations Coordinator Mikah Bertelmann ’21 was not in attendance, due to being on a study abroad trip.