Holy Cross junior Ivan Martinez and sophomore Rylee Horn were elected as student president and vice president for the 2019-2020 term, following an election held Tuesday. The results were announced to the College community via email Wednesday afternoon. Martinez and Horn did not run together but individually won the popular vote to secure their respective positions.
Due to the fact that they didn’t run as a collective ticket, Martinez and Horn both acknowledged that the beginning of their term will likely be spent getting to know each other and creating a plan for the next year.
“I feel like we’re both pretty approachable people and people shouldn’t have problems coming up to us about issues,” Horn said. “… I feel like we have relatively well-known names around campus. … We haven’t had much [time] to figure [things] out yet but hopefully in this upcoming week we will.”
Martinez explained that running for SGA office allowed him to create an impact on the College community. He credited his role in Latinos Unidos, the Holy Cross Latino Student Alliance, as inspiring him to run for a higher student leadership position.
“Once I joined junior year to be a senator I [saw] the impact I could have and once I started doing more events for Latino Unidos that impacted the school, … I wanted to run to have a bigger impact.” Martinez said.
Horn and Martinez both said that they want to continue building on the work that has already been done at Holy Cross. Horn said that continuing to expand Holy Cross’ branding is a part of her vision for next year.
“I think branding not only student government but Holy Cross is really important and I think that’s something that the school has been, not struggling with, but hasn’t been that great [at doing]. I want to make sure that we can get Holy Cross’ name out there. I proposed in senate to get a camera for SGA so we can put up more pictures of events and so more people can see that when they’re coming on tours,” Horn said.
Horn also talked about efforts she and her roommate, Marijka Lynch-Postoor, are taking to applying branding strategies to the athletic department.
“Branding with the sports teams and trying to get more people to come out to the games, I want to do that throughout the whole school,” Horn said.
Martinez envisions that he and Horn will continue the work of current SGA president and vice president David Napierkowski and Caleb Mishler. Martinez said they hope to carry the Napierkowski and Mishler’s energy into the new SGA committee known as the Dog Pound.
“I’ve seen David and Caleb create a good environment at Holy Cross,” Martinez said. “I want to do the same, I want to keep that going and there is a new committee coming on called the Dog Pound, which is more specifically about school spirit. … I’ve been to sports events, soccer games, basketball games and I want to increase that attendance within the student sections.”
Martinez and Horn will finish the semester getting to know the new SGA senators and appointing their programming board. Applications for programming board are available on the bulletin board outside the SGA office at the College.
