Following the elections, with a win for the presidential candidates Tanner McClain and Madison Fitzgerald, six new senators will be joining the ASUI Senate. Here’s what five of them have to say about their plans.
Daniela Aguilar-Carranza
Aguilar-Carranza is a sophomore studying international studies, sociology and Spanish at UI. Her running mate and newly elected senator, Hector Guerrero, shares the same objectives.
Aguilar-Carranza said she’d like to implement events to educate students about the importance of being sustainable. She’d also like to continue ASUI Senator Briana Navarro’s menstrual cup program.
“We want to create incentives that promote sustainability on and off campus,” Aguilar-Carranza said.
For accessibility, Aguilar-Carranza said she’d like to work to create a more available campus for students with disabilities. This includes creating a wheelchair-friendly environment.
Another one of her objectives is providing resources. Aguilar-Carranza said she’d like to highlight offices throughout campuses.
“There’s just so many resources on campus that students don’t know about, so I just want to work to highlight important office buildings such as your main offices, the food pantry, the Women’s Center, etc.,” Aguilar-Carranza said.
Involvement, a part of Aguilar-Carranza’s platform, is to help improve students’ participation at the university.
“Involvement after COVID went low,” Aguilar-Carranza said. “And something weird that I’ve been noticing is that there’s even lower involvement, in this year than last year, which is a little weird. So, we really want to work to up involvement and that can be through incentives and promoting better.”
Aguilar-Carranza said she ran for senate to advocate for students.
“See if they want to see any changes on campus,” Aguilar-Carranza said. “If they see any problems on campus, just being able to hear them, listen to them and work to better those changes to help them have a good campus experience.”
Hector Guerrero
Sophomore Hector Guerrero is a psychology major and member of TRIO. He hopes to represent students and get them involved.
“For example, involvement, I want to make sure that I represent the underrepresented community in Moscow,” Guerrero said. “I want to get them more involved with everything else and get them more seen.”
Another focus of Guerrero is to be able to showcase the resources that UI has to offer to students like Green Dot. Guerrero said that resources like these are important and being able to educate students on how to use these sources is vital.
Guerrero is working alongside elected ASUI Senator Aguilar-Carranza to be able to achieve these goals.
Guerrero also plans to work on uniting Interfraternity Council, Panhellenic and Multicultural Greek Council to work alongside one another.
“I’ve been in MGC for a little over a year now and I haven’t seen much of them connect to any other community but themselves,” Guerrero said.
Jared Sherman
Sherman is a freshman studying HR management, a member of both Greek life and housing on campus.
Starting next semester, Sherman will be the programming coordinator in the LLCs. He will be in charge of planning events for the dorms, a position he hopes to use to his advantage.
He plans to market events towards bringing both Greek and housing students together, understanding both sides of the coin.
“I think they’re just, honestly, incredibly separate,” Sherman said.
A proposed idea is to pair areas of housing with sororities and fraternities, a sort of “sister housing” to unite the groups.
“I have a few ideas,” Sherman said.
A gap in communication within the university Sherman hopes to solve is the separation between administration and students.
“Really open an end of conversation from administration to students directly,” he said. “Maybe setting up a time and place for that to occur would be a really great opportunity. Because, how often do students get to talk to the dean of students or President Green?”
Starting at UI during what he described as an odd time, Sherman felt people have been hesitant to get involved even after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.
“Coming into that period of time where people were iffy on going and getting involved,” Sherman said. “(Now) there’s great opportunity to bring Vandals together.”
To get students involved, Sherman wants ASUI to start focusing on events in the first two weeks of the academic year, the time in which he says events really count. He also hopes to bring back big events in general.
Blake Schoo
With his parents and brother graduating from the University of Idaho, Schoo will be the first to join the ASUI as a senator.
“My brother was in the fraternity Theta Chi and I’ve been coming up here for homecoming and since I was a junior in high school,” Schoo said. “My parents both went up here, my dad was at Delta Chi back in the day before they got kicked out.”
Schoo is a member of Theta Chi and was told about ASUI by alumni members.
“I thought it would be really cool to get engaged with the student community in that way,” Schoo said. “I thought it would be some way to step out of my comfort zone.”
Schoo’s main goal is to bring student engagement, pride and clubs. With engagement focusing on more events to have students involved. Pride in keeping campus clean and responsibility for one’s action, and lastly, to get more attention on clubs.
“At this point with all the masks being gone and whatnot, and the vaccines coming out, I feel like it could be coming back to normal soon,” Schoo said. “The events that I remember that stuck out to me very big in my first semester was the Kip Moore concert. I thought that was amazing.”
Schoo discussed how important it is for ASUI to attend diverse clubs and organizations in UI.
“I feel like it’s a big thing because I feel like reaching out isn’t taken care of enough to where people feel like they’re recognized and realized, and going to those events, I think it’s very big.” Schoo said.
Bre Torres
Torres, a junior studying criminology at UI, said she’d like to set goals for the university and represent campus. She hopes to return campus back to its lively presence.
“I’m just looking to bring back what U of I was prior to COVID,” Torres said. “Just a more lively campus and creating more incentives for students to get out and meet each other.”
A part of Torres’ platform is education, which includes helping students throughout their undergraduate experience. Torres said she’d like to help students before they start to struggle in classes.
“I want to do some little info sessions just about how to stay ahead at the beginning of the semester, and then also just kind of outlining communicating with professors,” Torres said. “And how professors can help assess students.”
For sustainability, Torres said she’d like to encourage the use of eco-friendly products because of the prevalence of single-use products on campus. She would also like to improve the use of Vandal Uber in a sustainable way.
“Just overall knowledge about sustainability,” Torres said. “As students, I feel like
considering that (the recycling program) was taken away because of cross-contamination with recycling and trash. I just feel like educating students about how it will allow us to potentially bring that recycling back.”
Torres said she decided to run for ASUI Senate to represent the university.
“I want to bring us back to what we had (prior to COVID-19),” Torres said. “Set goals and represent the university as a group. And then just expanding our knowledge, because we are constantly learning.”
Katelyn Rode could not be reached in time for an interview.
Sierra Pesnell, Daniel V. Ramirez and Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected]