Motivated by student-expressed frustrations with Student Federation, newly elected representatives and officers said they will focus on communicating the federation’s role in the upcoming year.
After current federation representatives nominated members for official positions, the student body elected the four officers, and non-Greek students voted for their nine independent representatives on Nov. 16-20.
Elected officers include junior Christian Wiese for president, junior Joe Spica for vice president, junior Christopher Pudenz for treasurer, and sophomore Jonathan Moy for secretary. Of the independent representatives, the only incumbent is sophomore Christie Mittlestaedt, working with an all-male group of four freshman, three sophomores, and one junior. They will take office in January 2016.
“During the course of the campaign, I noticed a vocal group that doesn’t hold a high opinion of the Student Federation. They think it’s irrelevant,” Freshman Representative Ross Hatley said. “My initial and ongoing goal as at-large representative is to prove to the student body that it can be a responsive, responsible institution.”
Criticisms provided common ground for the incoming representatives, who said they seek to improve Student Federation’s reputation and relevance.
“I’ve heard complaints that Student Fed is its own little world, that it doesn’t care about the students’ lives, and part of the reason I wanted to be on Student Fed is to prevent that from happening, to keep them grounded in reality,” Freshman Representative Thomas Ryskamp said.
Current Student Federation representatives said they see student criticisms of stinginess, bias, irrelevance, and distance as failures in communication.
“The reality is that Student Fed isn’t stingy — if you come to it with a proposal, you will not walk away empty-handed,” Pudenz said. “If representatives think that the proposal is one that benefits a reasonable proportion of student body, it will be approved.”
With the exception of off-campus improvements, Student Fed’s constitution limits it to spending student funds on proposals brought to it by clubs and honoraries.
Pudenz clarified the official and unofficial roles of representatives. He said their duties involve more than showing up to meetings and voting on proposals.
“A representative has the unofficial job of letting campus know that we want people to come with proposals,” Pudenz said. “We want to distribute student fees to campus and keeping ears to the ground about what capital improvements are out there.”
Hatley said the ultimate goal of Student Fed is to make Hillsdale College an even better place.
“I think that everyone is approaching it with a heart of service, and they want to do the very best thing,” Hatley said. “We’re all interested in finding the very best solution and path forward for the campus community; those who have doubts would have doubts in the institution rather than the people.”