This past week, Guilford held elections for our new senate team and the results are in.

Every year, the student body votes for the next Senate executive board. This year, the students elected junior Samir Hazboun as President, junior Justin Przezdziecki as Vice President, junior Daniel Veizaga as Interclub Council Chair, junior Josh Strassburger as treasurer and junior Nick Huckins as secretary.

There was concern that there were not enough candidates, so Senate extended the application process for two extra weeks. However, on election day, about 450 students came out to vote, which is a strong turn-out.

“I chose to run for Senate President because I feel that my skill set is extremely complementary to what is required for the position,” said Hazboun. “I love composing emails. I’m good at chasing down flighty administrators, and I have lots of blackmail on Aaron Fetrow.

All kidding aside, I really want to help give students the opportunity to pour all their energy into what they love at Guilford and not waste time getting burnt out on all of the bureaucratic hoops that you occasionally have to jump through.”

Meanwhile, other candidates have different hopes for the 2013–2014 academic year.

“I ran for Senate so that I could get involved and meet new people,” said Huckins in an email interview. “I want to be able to look back on my college experience and feel that I really made a positive impact on the school and its students.”

The new Senate-elects have a lot to say about how they plan to make the Guilford we know and love a better place for faculty, staff as well as both current and prospective students.

“A cool new idea that I believe was brought up by Samir Hazboun is to start a scholarship that will be aimed at undocumented students to help ease the financial pressure that college is associated with,” said Strassburger. “Samir’s job would be to get the scholarship approved, while mine would be to find and or request funds for this purpose.”

Huckins has a few new ideas as well.

“My biggest goal next year will be to get as many people involved with student Senate as possible,” said Huckins. “To do this, I believe that we will have to improve and expand the way we advertise for activities and events. If we are able to get the word out more effectively and to a larger amount of people, I believe we can increase the amount of participation in Senate.”

With all of these budding ideas, Senate has a lot on their plate for the upcoming year.

“Next year I plan on taking most of the leaders to a day retreat where they will learn to contract, plan, execute and set goals for their club or organization,” said Veizaga. “Also, this way they will all interact with each other and learn about other fun and interesting clubs.”

The Vice President – elect is looking forward to working with the new executive team.

“We just started working together as a group and are all very excited to help build on the great job that this year’s student Senate has done,” said Przezdziecki. “We have a few ideas in the works, and once we have them more organized, we will promptly announce them at Senate meetings.”

The new Senate team has a lot of exciting ideas in the works and is ready to put their skills to use.

“I’m really excited for the upcoming year and would like to thank everyone who came out and voted on Election Day,” said Przezdziecki. “I can’t wait to see all of you at student Senate meetings and other meeting opportunities throughout the next school year.”

However, there are concerns about the lack of females on the executive board for next year.

“I am worried about the presence of a female voice, and I just hope there’s a lot of intentionality about having conversations about gender and having conversations about what they’re not thinking about and challenging themselves to question the dynamics of the conversation,” said sophomore Alexandra Haridopolis, current Senate secretary. “I hope that there are a lot of women who apply for steering positions.”