Freshman Student Senate Elections at UNC: The Power of Student Voices

The spring semester sees a lot of activities take place. Students are graduating, athletes are re-signing and performances that students have been working on for the entire year see the light of day. During this busy period, student government elections are also taking place. Who will represent the students? How will they lead the school? All of these questions are answered right before summer break. Elections for the executive branch of leadership and all student senators take place. Except for freshmen.

“So, we start out with all the pervious senators from the year prior. They all carry over. Then we have a vacancy because we have senior senators that age out,” said Joshua Rudnik, Student Government Association parliamentarian. “Then we have the vacancy for the freshmen that just moved up, and we have to replace them, so that’s why we have our freshmen elections in the fall.”

Freshmen elections this year are already taking place. Four candidates for the freshmen senator positions are already racing for spots on the student senate. Daeja Ruacho, Athena Sena, Nellie Lozoya and Cedric Blanco are set to be voted into student senate and take up one of the five seats allotted to freshmen. These individuals, to Rudnik, are part of a group that is breathing a bit more life into UNC communities since the post-COVID slump.

“We’ve noticed its higher enrollment... There seems to be just more engagement overall with on campus events and organizations. We’ve noticed in years prior when we’ll have an event, we will average maybe 30 to 40 people coming to these. Now we’re pushing 70. It’s a dramatic, very surprising shift,” Rudnik said. “I hope this group is willing to get involved on campus and stay involved.”

These freshmen’s responsibilities will go beyond just being involved on campus. Student senate members, including the freshmen running right now, have full voting power in student government. A power that has a little more weight than it might seem.

“We have the opportunity to influence decisions that affect students… All of our senators have equal voting rights,” said Delainey Davison, SGA president.

This voting power is tangible. Student senators last year had enough power to dictate if students got a fall break.

“Fall break, we presented because there's been serious conversation on the back end about UNC as one of the only colleges in Colorado that does not have a fall break. So, we were pushing really hard because we thought that people would want to fall break,” Rudnik said. "But because of how our system is set up, we said, 'Well, let's go through and do a poll of the entire university, figure out where students actually land on that,' turns out they didn't want to fall break. If they had said yes, we would have had a fall break.”

These upcoming freshmen senators, as well as being involved with important decision making, will also be involved in SGA’s new goals for the school year, hoping to better represent the student body base and do things for students around UNC. These goals are what Davison is hoping she can have her student government focus on for the 2025-2026 school year, including the new senators.

“Our first goal is to be more visible on campus, just being more accessible to students. Our other goal is to be more transparent with students on campus with what we can be as far as like what is going on,” Davison said.

Elected members will be announced September 18.