Waynesburg University Student election results are in, and the new Student Senate president is Tyler McCoy. Former president T.J. DeNoforio will move to vice president. Among other vice president elections, sophomore Benjamin Dodge won against freshman Drew Hreha. Freshman Daniel Booth was able to win against senior Lauren Harvey, who became the treasurer.
The election was pushed back due to a controversy involving Olivia Schultz-Falandes. She placed promotional flyers in illegal places, such as door knobs. While there was consideration to ban her from the election, Schultz-Falandes was eventually permitted to run. She, however, ended up losing to McCoy for president.
“I don’t regret doing it, despite the fall out with the whole door hanger issue, and I thought it was a good learning experience. Overall, I’ve never run an actual campaign before,” Schultz-Falandes said. “It was really great to get into that and know how all of that works. I think overall it was extremely helpful.”
After winning social vice president, Dodge vowed to provide a way for Student Senate and Students Activities Board to run events without both groups interfering with each other.
“I plan to create more events on campus and try to come up with new ideas,” Dodge said. “One thing I don’t want to do is get in the way of whatever SAB has planned, I want it to be a
nice conjunction.”
Dodge has not committed to any plans for next year, but will begin to plan when he meets with his committee in the fall.
Over the course of this election, Booth has been around campus pursing what students think could make the campus better. Booth said the points on the list are not defined plans, but things to investigate.
“One thing I never really got was, [Student Senate] said they wanted to do what the students want but never said what the students want,” Booth said. “What I tried to do [was go] around to find what the students wanted.”
Booth told a story of guys who asked him for grips on the pull-up bars. He said it could be simple to accomplish, but there is the potential issue that student senate money cannot be spent on “capital purchase.”