Juniors AnnahMarie Behn and Corey Bowden — who are running for student body president and vice president, respectively — have created a platform that they hope bridges the gap between student government and the student body with focuses on dining hall initiatives, mental health and student engagement.
Behn is an electrical engineering major with a minor in corporate practice. She first became involved in student government during her freshman year as a member of FUEL (First Undergraduate Experience in Leadership), where she met Bowden. During her sophomore year, she served as a co-director of FUEL, as well as worked with Active Minds, Society of Black Engineers and professional development.
Bowden, a political science major with minors in real estate and digital marketing, has also spent his college career as an active member of student government. After his time in FUEL his freshman year, Bowden became Deputy Director for Diversity and Inclusion Race and Ethnicity during his sophomore year. He also said his interest in politics was reaffirmed after spending the Fall 2023 semester in Washington, D.C.
When writing their platform for their campaign, Behn and Bowden created a collaborative Google Document that allowed students who read the platform to leave comments on aspects of the platform they like and dislike.
“We’ll never know what problems are plaguing the University, if nobody’s saying anything,” Bowden said. “So I think when it comes to how we will address problems, the first thing is raising the issue. And I think that because of our platform and how it’s structured, I think that we’ll be able to do that.”
The ticket’s written foreword states that the goals outlined in the document are “both goals we imagine we could achieve within a year and with the continuation of current Student Government work.”
“When the administration is turned over, and then it’s a new year, and people say, ‘Well, people promise change, and it didn’t happen so I don’t have trust in student government,’” Behn said. “There’s a misunderstanding there and so I think communicating that is important.”
In Tuesday evening’s debate, Behn said the ticket’s greatest priority would be hiring more full-time counselors at the University Counseling Center and allocating more resources towards student mental health.
In her previous work with Active Minds, Behn she said has asked the UCC to share their budget because the UCC has told her they do not have the funding to hire more full-time counselors. Her request has been denied, but both Behn and Bowden hope to work through this setback.
“I think the biggest way we can push against that is really trying our hardest to find out what that money allocated is, and if they won’t tell us just go our own route: benchmark against other universities as the health and wellness department has done in the past,” Behn said.
In an interview with The Observer, Behn said she also wanted to prioritize making changes to the dining halls. The Behn-Bowden ticket proposes that the University switches food vendors from Gordon Food Services to Piazza Produce which offers a “wide array of fresh vegetables, fruit, and proteins,” according to the platform.
Bowden, on the other hand, said in the interview that his main priority is implementing a homecoming week in the week leading up to the first football game of the semester. The platform proposes that the Student Activities Office teams up with a number of other campus organizations to sponsor different events, performances and vendors that all students can take part in. Bowden said this homecoming week is part of his desire to increase student engagement in campus-wide events because he believes many students feel as if there is nothing to do on campus.
“I don’t really use Fizz a lot, but when I’m on Fizz, Thursday through Sunday: ‘Where the parties at?’” Bowden said. He acknowledged that different dorms and student groups do hold their own events on campus throughout the year, but he said he wants there to be more events involving the entire student body.
The ticket also highlighted other goals in their platform, including a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives. These include celebrations of different minority groups on campus, providing resources to first generation, low-income students and disability advocacy. The ticket also outlined LGBTQ+ initiatives and hopes to provide students with access to the common data set and the new Title IX regulations once they are finalized.
“We do want to push [the University] to be more transparent, and obviously any institution is not going to want to parade their downfalls around,” Behn said. “There’s a few avenues I could see this going, I could see this taking a student perspective, like if the administration won’t do it, then we will find a way to get this information out there to push it more.”
Behn and Bowden also hope to consolidate University resources into one centralized online location and promote transparency between students and administration. Building off of the Lee-Stitt administration’s reimplementation of the Student Life Council (SLC), Behn and Bowden hope to create an informal environment similar to SLC meetings where students, administrators and a representative from student government can chat about student concerns.
With all of these goals outlined, Behr and Bowden said they believe they stand out from the other tickets because of their past experience and their cohesive platform.
“When we were building this, we were talking about the dimensions of wellness that kind of span from emotional to physical, to financial, to all of these aspects, and I think everything in here fits in one of those buckets one way or another,” Behn said.
“The students can see that there is change that needs to be made,” Bowden said. “So as long as the students stay behind us, and as long as we continue to put on display that we are the team that needs to be in office to make this change, I think that that’s going to make us the winning ticket and that’s what is probably going to separate us from the other tickets.”
