Student body elects Tyler Steelman as SGA president for 2012-13 academic year
By Steven Haller
The students elected sophomore Tyler Steelman to be HPU’s SGA president for the 2012-13 academic year.
Steelman said, “The first priority of my administration will be to create a more streamlined [SGA senate] meeting with tighter fiscal responsibility and more individual senate responsibility.”
Steelman has been a class representative for the class of 2014 with SGA for two years. In addition to SGA president next year, Steelman will be serving in other leadership roles, such as the Assistant Resident Director of Finch, Millis, and Wilson and a University Ambassador. As SGA president, his primary goals involve running more efficient meetings.
“I feel like it is important to start with the small things, like the mess that we sometimes have with bills being incomplete and the long process we go through to check in,” said Steelman. “I feel like once we take care of the small things, people will not feel like SGA is such a hassle.”
Steelman said that once the small things are taken care of then SGA can start to take on bigger things, such as planning events to be sponsored and executed by the SGA. He said he wants the SGA to be more active with coordinating more campus events.
The candidates were only allowed to campaign in the five days leading up to the election, which culminated with the SGA presidential debate on March 18. Steelman points out that his campaign for this election was not like campaigns run for offices in the U.S. government.
“Unlike a campaign for an office in the real world, we don’t have a list of people who are likely voters. So, out of 5,000, you have to find the 500 or so that will actually show up and care and vote. The biggest challenge was, ‘If I am going to target someone, who is it that I target?’”
Bradley Taylor, a junior and current SGA attorney general, ran against Steelman and said one needs to have motivation when they enter any election.
“I felt that for this election you really needed to show that you have a passion for that office and make sure you demonstrated that to the students who would be voting,” said Taylor.
Taylor said he will look to his professional and career goals this fall, but he still wants to be involved with SGA.
“I will definitely be involved with SGA in some capacity as a senator or at least as a guest sitting in the back. I do not plan on leaving SGA,” said Taylor. “But, I hope that the new president will appoint me to his executive council.”
As SGA president, it will be Steelman’s job to appoint the members of the executive council. He says that half of his executive council has been narrowed down to a short list of possibilities of students to fill those positions. Steelman cites secretary, technology chair, academic chair, and publicity chair as positions he has individuals in mind for.
Steelman said that the vice president of judicial affairs and the attorney general positions might take more time to fill. Both of these positions involve work with Honor Court, so he wants to consult the student justices and the university’s judicial affairs administrators before he makes those decisions.
Steelman and his chosen executive council will be sworn in at the beginning of the final SGA senate meeting this semester on April 19, which will be the first official meeting run by his new administration.