Meet the candidate running for Student Body Treasurer for Drake Student Senate’s 2024-2025 executive board. Voting for all executive positions begins at 8 a.m. on March 27 and closes at 8 p.m. on March 28. If no candidate for a position earns 50% of the vote, runoff elections will be held from 8 a.m. on April 2 to 8 p.m. on April 3.
Instead of being accessed through myDrake, the ballot link will now be directly sent to student emails when voting begins.
Editor’s note: The following Q&A has been edited for style and clarity.
Grace McGrane
Instagram: @grace.mcgrane02
Grace McGrane (she/her) is a junior majoring in data analytics with minors in actuarial science and management.
What do you believe the role of Student Body Treasurer is?
What I suppose it means to me is being able to set the expectations for obviously the people after me, like I did [as SAB treasurer]. I know that [current Student Body Treasurer Munachi Okuagu]’s done a fabulous job with all the budget cuts and all the things that came up this past year. I understand that it was a really hard job, but I’m ready to pick that up and take control and make sure that everyone is accounted for and gets what they need [and] everything is allocated correctly and fairly.
Why are you running for Student Body Treasurer?
Last year I saw that SAB had their interest form, and I submitted my interview. I had a couple really good ideas going into that, that I actually implemented to the current treasurer position for SAB. That’s obviously a super big budget, and I’m ready for that next larger responsibility and doing it for the student body.
How do you feel about running uncontested?
I do love a little bit of friendly competition, but it came as a little bit of a shock that I was the only one. I’m not going to change how I would have campaigned prior to knowing. I think it shows that I’m very ready to step up to the job, and with campaigning, I didn’t want to drop the ball at all. I didn’t want people to open the ballot and say ‘Who’s that?’ I still want everyone to know my name even though there’s not an opponent. I still want to earn that position.
If you look on my posters all around the campus, you’ll see that I’m hosting a donut campaign in the breezeway next Tuesday the 26th at noon… It’ll be good to stand in the breezeway and match a name to a face. Your face is on the poster and stuff, but it might look a little bit different face-to-face. I’m just excited to get my name out there and get people excited about voting.
What experience has prepared you for this position?
I was able to be on the SFAC [Student Fees Allocation Committee] this past school year now that I currently am the SAB treasurer. So I got to be in on that and see just a little bit of what Munachi does. I’ve connected with her quite a few times in really understanding the role that plays within the Drake community and the students and the faculty. I understand that’s a big opportunity and a big responsibility. I’m ready to step up to that.
As the SAB treasurer…keeping an updated report has been really important. I’m looking forward to also utilizing that detail-oriented mindset for this treasurer position.
What specific goals or initiatives do you plan on implementing if elected?
Prioritizing transparency and thinking of the best interest of everybody, and not just favoring certain organizations over others. Not saying that that’s ever happened, but I can understand how it might. I’m hoping that the SFAC committee will have more inquiries during this next calendar year. I know that the budget was cut substantially, and that was an issue that we ran into, without a larger sum for the one-time funding. I’m hoping that we’re able to utilize that a little bit more with a better expectation of what will come up just because of what happened this past year.
I am currently in the business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, and I was their VP of Professionalism last calendar year. I got to plan a bunch of events and there was one event where we wanted to talk about financial literacy, and I brought it up again to a few of my peers and friends. I’m just asking, ‘Would you be interested in a financial literacy crash course, like a speaker event, maybe an hour, that Senate puts on?’ You would learn financial literacy as specifically a college student because I know that some people aren’t necessarily taught those things.
How do you plan on making sure students are aware of future budget challenges and how they will affect them?
I think one thing that is super important, especially for a governing body, whether that’s an organization’s EC or the Senate, is transparency. Nobody likes to feel like they’re out of the know, everyone wants to be a part of it. If something were to come up again where there was an issue, I think I would hold some kind of event to discuss it, where it’s an open forum where you can ask questions and kind of understand what’s going on. Munachi did a version of that with the Presidents’ and Treasurers’ Summits last semester, like ‘This is what happened and this is what we’re going to kind of do about it.’ I really admire that about her job. Being able to be open to sharing what’s going on would be fairly important, especially for that transparency.
How do you plan to balance this position with your other commitments?
I’m currently an intern year-round, part-time during the school year and full-time over the summer. It’s been definitely a challenge to set the boundaries of, ‘how late should I work in the office? When does school come before work?
I can’t say that I had wonderful time management skills, but getting an internship so early on made me need to. Having that early on helped. I’ve had pretty good time-management skills, I would say, for the past two years. Adding a new thing to my schedule I think would be a great opportunity as well.
