When seniors Madeleine Corcoran and Kathy Ogden were elected Saint Mary’s student body president and vice president, they agreed their focus would be on the community and addressing students’ desire for change. The team has made some headway in furthering the goals of its healthy living platform, but is still looking to do more in the spring semester.
Corcoran and Ogden said they talked to food services general manager Kenneth Acosta at the beginning of the year in order to determine what they would be able to realistically accomplish in terms of healthy living and the dining hall.
“We talked to [Acosta] at the beginning of the year … with our food committee chair Giavanna [Paradiso],” she said. “Giavanna has a strict diet, so she has a different perspective.”
Corcoran said Acosta was able to carry out some of the small changes student government suggested. She said Paradiso was instrumental in determining these changes.
“Giavanna is a student-athlete and she also has a lot of allergy restrictions,” Corcoran said. “She brought some of the challenges for those who have allergies to our attention and also to [Acosta’s] attention. Now there’s the fridge over by the sandwich line that offers individual items that are not cross-contaminated or exposed to other items in the dining hall.”
Corcoran and Ogden also discussed adding extra workout classes in Angela Athletic Facility as part of their healthy living platform. But, Corcoran said, this has been challenging in some ways.
Adding workout classes has “been hard because [Angela Athletic Facility] is utilized by many people,” she said. “And the instructors [of the classes] have other jobs, so we haven’t really made progress by having those classes.”
However, Ogden said a lot of the athletic clubs, like Yoga Club and Cycling Club, have been able to increase the number of classes they offer.
Next semester, Ogden and Corcoran said they hope to include more healthy living activities, including those that promote mental health.
Corcoran said college students especially need to practice healthy and mindful living.
“In college, it can be so easy to put your health at the back burner and be so stressed about school that you don’t make the best choices about food, or you skip your workout one day — it’s really important for our emotional happiness that we work out and eat healthy foods,” she said. “Without good health, we wouldn’t be performing as well as we could as students.”
Ogden said she always feels better after eating healthy or exercising.
“A healthy body is a happy body,” she said.
