by OLIVIA HECKER
The recent closure of campus has affected the operation of many on-campus organizations. One such organization that has a large impact on Drake’s student body is the Student Senate.
Students run for positions such as student body president and vice president positions. Typically students have the opportunity to campaign for their candidacy on campus; however, due to COVID-19 and social distancing orders, this election was anything but typical.
Senate has continued to hold its weekly meetings using Microsoft Teams and stay in constant communication.
Sarah Herring, a sophomore at Drake studying politics, held one of the two election commissioner positions on student senate. Herring’s position was especially crucial during the election. She is responsible for running student elections, holding hearings, creating the ballot and announcing election results.
“We changed the election to be entirely online,” Herring said.
The ballots were already online, so that was one less thing they had to worry about. According to Herring, they pushed the executive election back a week for candidates to prepare for the election to be entirely online. And that the commission used Microsoft team’s video calls for the candidate meetings, forums, and hearings.
In fact, Herring deemed this election as ‘historically unprecedented’
“Student senate had never had an entire election completely online,” Herring said. “It was trial and error as we went along and it highlighted the fact that many of the bylaws need to be updated to include social media campaigning.”
Ultimately Herring was proud of the work she did and glad to be part of such a historic election for Drake.
Incoming student body president Adam Koch was greatly affected by Drake transitioning to online learning. With all of Drake’s students being strongly suggested to move off-campus, it made it hard for Koch to campaign and earn potential votes.
Koch said that Drake moving to online schooling made it very difficult to campaign. While the situation made him realize the benefits of using Facebook campaigning, he wished he could have been able to meet with more student organizations in person.
“Transitioning into my role as student body president has been difficult,” Koch said. “But I am proud to represent students whether it is in person or online.”
