On March 14, Washburn Student Government Association (WSGA) organized a spring fling to announce the winner of president and vice presidents position. There were 558 votes altogether for election of president and vice president and senators.
The announced WSGA president elect and vice president elect are Kate Coulter and Ryan Durst.
Coulter has been the director of marketing and communication since spring of 2024.
“Ryan and I have talked a lot about wanting to be the change we want to see, seeing that culture change,” Coulter said. “So we want to be more outwardly focused and like getting involved with student orgs, getting involved with the entities here on campus, whether it be sports, student organizations, plays, musicals, whatever it is, we want to be out in the community, Washburn community.” .
Coulter thinks that her role in marketing and communication really helped her to be prepared to stand for the position of president of WSGA.
“There’s a lot of emotions kind of running through me, and it has been this past couple weeks from the beginning of this I always made sure that nothing was certain…I was firmly in the mindset of whoever won is going to do an amazing job”, Durst said. “One of the first things I want to do as vice president is actually just sit down with the president and build our cabinet. Be intentional about our cabinet. Think about that first, and then once we actually select the people, sit down with everybody and hear from them and talk with them.”
Student Government is one of the three factors in the institutional governance process. So they’ve got faculty, staff, faculty senate, a student council and student government. Also there is a staff council and those three groups work together to give guidance to the administration on issues that relate to them in those areas.
“We had over 500 students that voted this year, which is an increase from 350 to 400 as of last year, so it’s nice to see students and more actively engaged and involved in it and then we have a more full Senate Council that of students who ran to be a part of student government for next year,” said Eric Grospitch, vice president of Student Life.
This year, 26 students ran for senate and were all accepted into their roles.
WSGA hosts annual elections, allowing any student to run for a position. There is an application process to solicit names for the ballot, and then they run through the election process.
Edited by Eden Conrad and Stuti khadka
