Chase Mizzell, Kenneth Bragg, Alex Waelde to run for top offices
Filing times for Student Government executive positions and the student senate ended Wednesday afternoon, and while candidates haven’t officially been announced yet, three students have confirmed that they have filed for executive positions.
Current Student Body Vice President Chase Mizzell and third-year economics student Kenneth Bragg, along with a third student who has yet to be named, have all filed to run for student body president. Mizzell won his current position in an unoppposed race last year, while Bragg single-handedly forced a runoff in last year’s student body treasurer race by writing in his own name.
Fourth-year business student and Drinking Ticket founder Alex Waelde is one of four students who have filed to run for student body vice president.
Three students have also filed to run for student body treasurer, one more than last year. None of those who have filed have made it publicly known.
While more students filed for executive positions this year, student senate is seeing fewer filers.
Only three senate districts have more candidates filed than spots open, and many districts with fewer candidates filed than senators currently serving.
The College of Arts and Sciences, the Darla Moore School of Business and the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies will be the only senate districts with competition for seats. Twenty students filed to run for the 14 seats in the arts and sciences’ delegation, 11 filed to run for the seven seats in the business and six filed to run for the three seats in the mass communications and information studies.
Three districts — those of the Colleges of Social Work and Pharmacy and the School of Music — had no candidates file. The College of Social Work currently has no senators in its two seats, while the School of Music and the College of Pharmacy both have their two-senator delegations full.
Elections Commissioner Meghan Aubry encouraged students in these districts who may be interested in student senate but did not file to run to write their names in on election day.
“Since nobody else is running, one vote could do it,” the third-year political science student said.
Five districts that currently have full delegations had fewer candidates file than are currently serving. The Schools of Music and Public Health and the Colleges of Pharmacy, Nursing and Engineering and Computing all saw declines in interest in these seats compared to current student representation.
All who filed for candidacy must undergo a review of their GPA and judicial records before being able to run, Aubry said, so an official list of approved candidates was not available. The list should be available soon; according to Aubry, the latest possible date it would be made public would be Jan. 31, before the mandatory candidate meetings and before the official kickoff of campaigning.