The Daily Gamecock: What experience makes you qualified for this office?
Alexis Free-Jenkins: I’ve been in Student Government for two years. I started off as freshman council member and I was on the community outreach team for [the] freshman council, and then I’ve been in student senate for this past year ... I work for Senator Fair (of Greenville) over in the Statehouse, and I basically help him draft legislation and research legislation. That will not only help the students here at USC but help constituents state wide. I’m in that pretty much every day of the week and doing that and helping him and answering phone calls and speaking very closely with constituents. So I’m very well-versed in hearing the concerns of people, writing them down, taking notes and finding solutions and then bringing them to my own senator so he can draft legislation to help that ... Also in senate this year I helped co-sponsor a lot of legislation like the capping bill, and then the rearranging when you can and can’t do hard and soft campaigning.
TDG: If you could accomplish one thing during your term, what would it be?
AFJ: I think that a lot of times, my competitors want to say that they want to fix Student Government, and I don’t necessarily want to fix Student Government. I want to fix how it’s aiding the student body, because I think the focus should be on the student body ... So my main goal would be trying to make sure that every student knows that we have these resources on campus that can help them if they have any problems going on. I want to run a mental awareness campaign that runs monthly and so students know every month that they have resources on campus, they have free counseling sessions, that they can talk to someone if they need to and if they can’t find solace in anyone else, they can find it in me and in the student health services center so that they can know at any point in their time on campus ... that they have someone to talk to. So as Vice President, I want to be there for students and make sure that they know that we have these resources.
TDG: What inspired you to run for the job?
AFJ: I was inspired pretty much because I’ve been in Student Government for two years and I’ve seen a lot of the things that have been happening and how students aren’t very in agreement with a lot of the things that happen in Student Government and students aren’t very proud of our Student Government. And since we're here for the student body, we shouldn’t have students that disagree with how we're conducting business and not really thinking that we’re there for them ... Students shouldn’t think that we're just there to build our resume and not there to help other students. And so resume and everything aside, I’ve always wanted to be there to help students ... And we’ve had a lot of things happen on campus in diversity forums and forums that happen with the mental health awareness, and no one in Student Government has [shown] up ... It shouldn’t end there, and I think that a lot of times in the past, in everything that I've seen so far, it has ended at the forum because no one is there to speak for these students at an administrative level and that has to change ... A lot of times we have a lot of things that happen on campus and I feel like as a female, since our student body is 54 percent female, and I’m a minority, I can relate to both sides of the spectrum as it regards to our student body as a whole. And me going to administration with these issues is a very personal experience and a very relatable experience and our administration will get the real out of what’s happening.
TDG: What food do you think embodies your personality and why?
AFJ: My favorite food is Chinese food. Love it. It’s the absolute greatest. I’m a very complex person and, I don't want to say "all over the place," but my personality is very outgoing and I'm very whimsical ... I like to plan things out but I also like to (do things) spur of the moment ... I love Chinese food, it has so many things in it. It has meat. It has noodles. It has vegetables in it. So I just think it's very complex ... A lot of the times when you make Chinese food, I feel like it's made with love and passion so that's me ... If you look at a plate of lo mein, meat and everything in it ... you have long noodles, they intertwine and I feel like, this might be a stretch, but I’m intertwined with a lot of people on campus and a lot of the experiences that people have on campus, I’m able to relate to and I think lo mein is me.