Jay Waagmeester is a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences senator candidate for Student Government. Waagmeester is a sophomore in public relations. 

What do you hope to accomplish with this position?

The biggest thing right now is that there’s a lack of trust in the Student Government from the students’ perspective. I think right now, Student Government is viewed as more of a club and not as an organization, and I think that it’s important for students to realize that Student Government’s here for the students’ best interests and not for any other reason.

What do you think is important about this position, and why should students care about this election?

With any election, anytime that you have a say in something, you should care about it, especially when people have grievances later on. There’s a lot of governments that aren’t going to operate perfectly, but at the end of the day, you want to be able to say that you participated and either ran for a position or voted. I think you just feel a little bit better about the whole situation if you participated in some way. I also think that you get better outcomes from the government when there are more people interactive with it. … You’re not going to get your best outcome if there’s only 200 people involved.

What experience do you have that makes you the right candidate?

Just like any job or position, passion goes a lot further than anything else. I also think I’m qualified just because I have previous leadership experience, like being student body president in high school. I’m only a freshman, so I haven’t had a lot of time to gain that experience here. I was involved in mock trial in high school, so I have similar skills. While I have qualifications elsewhere, the bottom line is that I’m someone who is eager to fill the position and do the job. I’ve been watching meetings, keeping up with the bills that are going through right now because, if I’m lucky enough to win the election, those bills are going to be relevant when I assume office.

What will you do to specifically help LAS students?

One thing that’s important to me is the inclusivity and accommodations for learning resources for disabled students. Disability is something that hits close to home for [my family], and I just want to be as strong of an advocate for that as I can be.

What made you want to run?

I want to be involved. When I started to look into [Student Government] a little more, I realized that it was a good fit for me, and it was something that I think I would be good at, and it’s something that I have a passion for.

What will you do to promote a greater understanding between Student Government and the student body?

I think, obviously, the image is tarnished. That’s very apparent. And what do you do to fix that image? A lot of collaboration with outside organizations — we’ll call it brand recognition. It’s about associating things, and I think that obviously, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done with race and diversity within Student Government, but I think if Student Government were to host one big event during the year that maybe brought outside students that wouldn’t usually think of Student Government, then it could draw them in and help them understand. We need to fix the things that need fixed and then find a new thing to recognize Student Government with.