Katie Schultz
News Editor

As the spring semester comes to an end, Associated Student Government (ASG) wrapped up the year with elections.
Next year Nick Lopez and Dillion McMillen will be the new ASG president and vice president, respectively. They ran unopposed and received 207 votes. Next year, they have some big plans for Mesa State.
“We want to create a greater sense of school unity,” Lopez said. “I think this has been missing since the absence of our student center.” He said in order to do this they will communicate more with administration and other organizations on campus.
Lopez also said that ASG plans to keep any increase of student fees to a minimum, but he can’t promise there will be no increase because it is a big budget year.
ASG also plans to rework the internal structure of ASG in hopes to insure that ASG better represents the students of MSC.
Overall they want to increase student involvement and educate students on the major issues that higher education faces next year. These issues include higher education budget cuts and tuition increase.
“The most effective (plan) is to get out there and talk to students, getting in their face,” McMillen said.
On the other hand, they are concerned with the turn-out of the election, with 4.5 percent of students coming out to vote.
“I’m relatively disappointed,” Lopez said. He went on to say he was hoping for more involvement because of the issues that higher education faces.
However, they are not discouraged since this was a greater turnout than last year, and come next spring they hope to see a greater student involvement.
Yet it isn’t only the president and vice president that will be changing next semester. Ryan Hendershot will be stepping down as ASG president and taking over the position of Student Trustee with 206 votes.
Next year the ASG senate will be made up of new and familiar faces. There are several positions that have multiple seats. The at-large senators will be Stephanie Wickers with 173 votes and Shamus Mahon with 135 votes. The humanities and social sciences senators will be Charlotte Rowden with 145 votes, Ben Walker with 129 votes and Eric Scott with 129 votes. The math and science senator will be Cody Cooper with 166 votes and Chris Johnson with 159 votes. Sean Thielen with 165 votes and Ross Bentzler with 152 votes will be the new business and professional studies senators.
There are other positions with only one seat. Justin Kawcak will be the new graduate studies senator with 195 votes. The campus resident senator will be Adrienne Barlow with 198 votes. The new Montrose campus senator will be Brian Casaus who received 187 votes. Kami Utu will be the new minority senator with 195 votes.
“(We) hope to make a lot of changes,” Rowden said.
Both Lopez and McMillen are happy with the results of the elections and they look forward to working with the new senate.
“They are a great bunch of leaders helping represent students,” Lopez said.
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kschultz@mesastate.edu