Editor’s Note: Changed voting to closing at 5 p.m.
Associated Student Government (ASG) has begun their campaigns for the President and Vice President, who take office in Fall 2022. Voting opens on April 11, and goes through the 15, closing at 5 p.m.
Presidential candidate Jimmy Hollar has served as the Biological Sciences Senator in ASG for the past year, works in Admissions, and also tutors students at Bookcliff Middle School Vice Presidential candidate Asa Steele
Hollar is in his third year at CMU, and is majoring in Political Science. He grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, with a high school graduating class of 15 students, and is looking to attend law school after completing his degree.
“I felt like I needed to run because I felt that it would be important for me to try to lead ASG into a new direction and be more productive and be more helpful for individual students,” Hollar said.
Steele is a sophomore student majoring in Counseling Psychology. He grew up with eight siblings, five adopted and three biological. Born and raised in Grand Junction, he transferred to CMU after a semester in Boulder.
“[ASG] wasn’t super on my radar up until [Jimmy] came to me with this campaign idea of a compassion-based, listening to the students and their voices-based campaign. And I fell in love with it. It spoke to some areas in my background in my field,” Steele said.
The duo is running a campaign based on a few facets, such as giving students a more direct avenue of communicating with ASG and increasing the production of ASG beyond seeing fiscal bills to have more projects and overall direction. Their campaign slogan is “Here for You.”
“I was thinking about running for President because I thought that I could bring some fresh ideas to the Senate,” Hollar said. “I thought that I could try to help individual students and there were a lot of things that I was thinking about that weren’t being done.”
Hollar worked with past ASG President Beau Flores, who suggested Hollar run for ASG President after conversations about ideas and suggestions Hollar had.
For part of their campaign, Hollar and Steele opened an Instagram to gauge issues around campus, which include anything from smaller-scale things like replacing the felt on the pool tables in The Point to fixing the bike paths around North for students that feel unsafe using them.
One point of their campaign is to focus on mental health, to make sure students know about and have resources available. Steele grew up in a family that focuses on therapeutic foster care, which influenced him to go into counseling psychology.
“Therapeutic foster care deals with children specifically who have been exposed to traumatic backgrounds. […] All my five adopted siblings have all had exposure to some pretty gruesome stuff, and what therapeutic foster care is you get licensed in foster care and then you have extra training and you know, upkeep training to do throughout the years to be able to take in those children who need the extra support,” Steele said.
One of their campaign ideas is centered around a “tell me” box: boxes around campus that students can write ideas or thoughts on for change and improvement that the President will read.
“Students could individually write me notes, and I’m making a promise that if I get elected, and I’m able to put up these tell me boxes that I’ll read every single response,” Hollar said.
Hollar attributes part of their campaign of wanting to try to do good things for people that need it as inspired from witnessing poverty in Pueblo, as well as an up and down high school experience.
“A big theme in our campaign is addressing the general and the systemic things within our school, but also listening to the individual and their situation and how things are affecting them. And that’s where ASG should be, I think, is direction-oriented, working with students and clubs and organizations and making progress with both fronts,” Steele said.
