Voting for the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) all campus elections opens Monday, including those for presidential and vice presidential candidates.

There are two sets of presidential and vice presidential candidates running for USG’s highest leadership, all currently part of USG. Candidate pairs Samia Abdulle/Jack Drouin and Riley Hetland/Ethan Fiegel sat down with the Minnesota Daily to talk about goals and priorities for their respective campaigns and the next academic year.

Why are you running? 

Abdulle: “I’m running for USG president because I have been in USG for the past two years, I cared really deeply about the organization and I’ve had a chance to hold a leadership position for the past two years. I’ve noticed a lot of things that can be improved with the way that USG operates, both internally and externally. I think that USG, considering that they’re supposed to be representative of the entire undergraduate student body, there are some ways that can be benefited as well. I want to make this school better, and I think that the ways that I want to make this university better are unique to me and unique to my own experiences.”

Drouin: “I’m running for vice president for a lot of the same reasons. It’s to me, honestly, I’ve also been in USG for two years now. I’m also a committee director. But I think I have another perspective that is also very beneficial to students. As an outsider of the state, I wasn’t very familiar with the campus while growing up. I came here, I lived in a dorm, and I have a lot of different experiences from my first year that I really like to share and emphasize. And then as being in my second year, I think I also have a lot of different perspectives and different ideas of doing things in USG that I think would be beneficial. And I’ve also led a team and I would love to continue leading other teams while serving as vice president.” 

Hetland: “I want students’ voices to be heard and acted upon. I think the biggest reason that I’m running is because I want to make sure that students feel like they have a direct line to those who represent them, and so I’m running because I want to make sure that every student has someone committed to making sure that we have effective outreach events for all campuses. I currently have majors or minors housed in all Twin Cities campuses, St. Paul, Minneapolis and West Bank. So I feel I have a good standing to be able to adequately communicate and give people a chance to talk to us and access and access us. So the reason I’m running is to make sure that every student on each campus has a voice and feels like their voice is being acted upon. I just think I’m the best person for outreach because my role currently as the Director of Civic Engagement throughout the Row the Vote initiative, which I led in the fall semester, I had a team of 20 staff and then about 200 additional volunteers. Together, we were able to interact with over 12,000 students and adequately assess their needs and their motivations and voting in the presidential election. So through that, I was able to understand student needs and talk to students. And because of that, I feel I have a great foundation of what needs students have and what issues they’re facing.”

Fiegel: “I think it’s very important that students have a presidential team that’s accessible to them and a team that they know values their voices, their concerns, and that their opinions can be heard on top of that. I’ve been involved in student government all three years that I’ve been at the U so far. And during that time, we’ve had three different university presidential administrations, whether that was the Gabel administration, Interim President Ettinger last year and President Cunningham this year. So with the amount of change that’s been going on in the University and change from things that are outside of our control, like at the federal level, I think it’s important to have a leader that’s experienced working with different groups of people and knows kind of the ins and outs of how the University works and how to navigate that.” 

What are your main goals if elected? 

Abdulle: “We are running on three presidential pillars. Transparency, transformative partnerships and tangible actions are all three of these pillars. They cover different areas of USG as a whole. Our first one is about financial transparency, specifically as students ourselves, we understand just how expensive life on campus has been. We understand just how it’s very hard to prioritize being a student first and foremost. And with tuition increases, cost of living going up, it’s just very hard to be a student right now, and to mitigate those changes, we’re proposing the creation of a financial ad hoc committee, and this committee basically is going to work on understanding where students’ tuition money goes. As the larger stakeholders, it’s really important that our voices are being considered and that we are, you know, we’re taken into account. By the end of this committee, they’re going to be able to produce a very comprehensive report about where your tuition money is going and make sure that every cent is going back to bettering the lives of students on campus.”

Drouin:  “So our second T is transformative partnerships, and this a lot comes from partnerships between USG and other student groups. So this means that we’ve looked at USG’s partnerships from this year and from past years, and have noticed that the partnerships between it and other student groups have really been lacking. And don’t get me wrong, there are some events like the global Gala, where other partnerships do come into play, but we would like to host more events with other student groups to be able to have them more represented in USG. Another part of this is having more student student group representatives in USG, because student groups can also have a representative in USG, and not everyone knows about that. So having or ensuring that student groups have their representation and have their voice heard in USG is really essential to us.” 

Abdulle: “One other thing that I want to add to that is just how increasing or making sure that we are all really well connected within USG, and the greater student population is a great way for us to make sure that we’re getting diverse perspectives and making sure that USG is representative of the population that we serve. So our last presidential pillar is tangible actions. Some people might already know this, but both Minneapolis and the greater state of Minnesota have something called sanctuary state status, and that basically means that local and state officials are not allowed to work with federal immigration officers or ICE. It means that they cannot be involved in that at all. They can’t help them. They need to stay out of it all together. And the University of Minnesota has been kind of in the gray area for that. You know, you’re not really sure if they’re really going to comply with that if they’re really going to work towards that in any capacity, or even if sanctuary state even covers the greater or the University of Minnesota. We believe that as students, this University is, first and foremost, a place of education. It’s a place for education, a place of growth, and nobody, especially people from mixed document households, should have to worry about having to deal with ICE officers or just any sort of federal immigration officers coming onto campus and making their learning experiences not so great.”

Hetland: “The reason I was running was to make sure we have monthly outreach events, not just on the Minneapolis campuses, but in St. Paul. If elected, I’d be the first student body president on St. Paul campus. And I think that’s something that needs to be seen throughout my presidency and my presidential administration is making sure that we’re accessible to students that are also in St. Paul. So monthly outreach events where students just have complete freedom to tell us what’s bothering them and what they want us to be working on. That’s my first goal. Then we also do have sub-goals or policy goals. I can talk about a couple. Our first goal is student health and well-being. It’s probably the most important thing that our students feel supported in all aspects of their life. So we’re committed to making sure that mental health resources are accessible. Currently, the system for accessing mental health care is extremely confusing, so we’re going to be increasing the accessibility of this, working to get more staff to make sure that their people are actually able to get the care that they need. We’re going to expand peer support systems, strengthen outreach efforts to make sure people are aware of the things that are already in place to help them and understand what health and well-being is. Also improving access to reproductive care, making sure that every person on our campus has the care that they need, because needs look different across all students, and making sure that we have resources available for every student on this campus. And then additionally, under student health and well-being, is combating food insecurity. We’re committed to expanding our Nutritious U food pantry and working to get a grocery store on campus. I think that’s something that is so needed. It’s awful that we don’t have affordable food options on campus, and it’s simply unacceptable. We also have a really strong college affordability goal. We are facing a tuition increase, and we will for the next few years, so that rollout is going to be awful for students that, coupled with the grant deficit, is just making students’ lives unaffordable, and no one should be priced out of a college education. Also under college affordability, making sure that we have housing that’s affordable for students that we have on-campus job opportunities for students that we’re promoting.  With financial aid transparency, making sure that all aspects of student life are affordable and accessible, because again, no student should be priced out of a college degree.  

Also, I am an environmental science major and sustainability in environmental policy is something that’s near and dear to my heart. So looking at environmental injustices and making sure that we can prevent those environmental injustices from happening on our campus is really important. To do this, we’re going to push the University to expand their solar energy on campus. Universities made tons of commitments to climate goals. They’ve declared that they’re going to be carbon neutral by 2050 and they have sub-goals set for solar energy and several other aspects of renewable energy, but they’re not releasing plans on how they’re getting there, and they’re not acting upon it. So we’re going to call for the University to increase their investments in solar and all new building structures, and we’re going to make sure that the University does follow through on their goals. 

Then additionally, we’re going to work on decreasing waste on campus. The University is currently developing a Zero Waste Plan, but there’s been no known student consultation in that plan. So it’s really really difficult to make a plan that works for students when you’re not consulting students. So making sure we’re amplifying student voices in that and we’re going to push them to make a firm plan with a firm deadline, to make sure that we are actually moving towards zero waste on campus. We’re also going to push for a shift to electric vehicles on campus. The University says our emissions from our University fleet is going to be down 70% by 2033. We’ve not seen any action taken to get there. So pushing them to make sure that they do meet their emissions goals is extremely important.” 

Fiegel: “The fourth of our policy pillars is campus safety. I am currently USG’s Campus Safety Committee Vice Chair, so I’ve got some experience in this area. And the first of our goals is actually a project that I’ve been working on this year, increasing mass threat preparedness on campus. We’re lucky enough to have not had an actual mass threat situation, but it’s something that obviously has been part of our lives, and unfortunately, we’ve seen mass threats and mass violence happen at peer institutions, such as the shooting at Michigan State a couple years ago, and we think that the University needs to be taking a proactive instead of a reactive role, because we don’t want to have to make these changes after something bad happens here. We want to make sure that that isn’t going to happen. So there’s a three-prong plan that we’re currently working on. The first of those prongs is to make sure that all classrooms have interior locking mechanisms. It seems like it’s common sense, but a lot of our old buildings don’t have that. Our next goal is to create and require active threat training for all new students. Currently, it’s an optional Canvas module that people can take, but we think that’s something that everybody should be exposed to so they know what to do if they’re ever in that situation. And then finally, we want to work with the University to attach building safety plans to all course syllabi, so that way students know how to evacuate or get out of the building that they’re in if there ever is an emergency. 

Our next goal related to campus safety is promoting Clery Act compliance. The Clery Act is a federal law that requires the University to report crimes in a timely manner when they happen around campus. I think most of us can acknowledge that the safety alerts that we receive are oftentimes not detailed or timely. So we want to work with UMPD to make sure the reports that are being sent out are both detailed and timely, and that there’s follow-up when necessary as well. And in part of doing that, what we want to make sure is that there’s an active conversation between students and administration and UMPD. This goes back to our original goal of student outreach and making sure every student’s voice is heard, because we fear that too often conversations related to campus safety leave out student voices. As students, we are the most prominent stakeholder in this, so it’s important to make sure student consultation is included. 

And finally, we want to make sure that the neighborhoods around campus remain safe or can be made safer. Recently, the expanded patrols in Dinkytown and Como have started more actively this year, and the University is looking at renewing them. We will advocate for them to do that because we have seen statistically, a drop in both petty crime and violent crime as a result of these extended patrols. But as part of that, we want to make sure there’s more communication, again, between students and UMPD, so students know why there’s more police presence and that it’s a good thing for safety, not that there’s more crime happening.” 

What changes are you looking to implement? 

Abdulle: “I guess the first one would probably be the creation of the financial ad hoc committee. That is something that has never existed within USG, but it does exist at other BigTen schools. So we know that it can be a very smooth transition to have that here. Then also just some reporting structure changes, more like internal changes, we want to make sure that USG is a place of professionalism and growth, and that everybody that comes into USG, regardless of your position, you feel comfortable here and you feel like you can be a good student leader.” 

Drouin: “Another change is just including more student groups in USG and having just more voting members in our general body as a whole to make sure that we do get those perspectives from every area of the campus.”

Hetland: “I think the main changes have to happen at a higher level making sure we are implementing more outreach. Currently this year at USG, we only had two outreach events, neither of which were on St Paul. So I think our overarching thing that we are going to actively change is that commitment to outreach and making sure that we are accessible to students and that students have a direct pipeline to those that are representing them. So we have an unwavering commitment to making sure students’ voices are heard, and especially right now, what that looks like is making sure that people feel safe and seen on campus. That works in with our DEI goals as making sure that all students feel safe and valued and protected on this campus.”

Fiegel: “Just outreach as an overarching theme is we want to make sure that the University, not just our administration, but the University presidential administration also value student voices.  With climate policy, there’s been next to no consultation there, there isn’t good communication between UMPD and students and if you look at search committees that there’s been recently, there was next to no student representation on the presidential search committee that selected the finalists for the University President. There’s only two students represented on the current Provost search committee as well. And we just want to make sure that important decisions made at a University level involve student perspectives.”

What are your main concerns for next semester? 

Drouin: “I think a lot of our main concerns fall around students not being able to focus the most on academics, and this comes both with sanctuary state status as well as mental health and other related things. Students have so many things that they’re dealing with, like hiked-up rent prices and lack of a grocery store nearby campus. There are a lot of things that take away the focus from academics. And I’d say our main thing is to try to bring it back to academics and make sure students can really thrive.”

Abdulle: “Not just academics, but just making sure that this University is a place where you can grow without all these other inhibitors in place. You know, you don’t have you shouldn’t have to worry too much. You should be able to worry more about, like your biology exam, for example, than like, paying rent, you know, and that shouldn’t be such a heavy subject for a lot of students.” 

Hetland: “Frankly, the University is pricing students out of accessing college degrees, so pushing back on that back as hard as we can is going to be an uphill battle, and we’re taking it on utilizing our best resources. I’ve had conversations with our state legislatures several times about this tuition increase, and I’ve also surveyed students and seen student responses and listened to students when they’re expressing how these tuition changes are affecting them. Making sure that we’re able to make change in that realm after decisions have already been made without consulting students, is just so important because there’s no way we can continue pricing students out of college. Just that overarching theme of the University not taking small voices seriously or into consideration at all is a really big problem. There’s just so many different areas where students are not being heard in decisions by the University. So I think that’s our biggest battle to fight, and it’s the one we’re most motivated to fight for, whether it’s advocating for the pigs and sheep on St. Paul campus or students’ ability to access a college education. We are very steadfast in pushing against the University to listen to students.”

Fiegel: “Another challenge anybody in higher education would deal with this coming year, and we’ve already seen now, is the uncertainty coming from a federal level when it comes to a lot of things related to educational policy. There’s so much that’s up in the air right now, whether that’s been cuts to research funding and University funding, attacks on international students or attacks on diversity equity and inclusion efforts. There’s been so many challenges to the way that things have normally been done on a University level, and we want to make sure that Undergraduate Student Government and the University of Minnesota remain a place that is deeply committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as a space where students are free to express their opinions, where free speech is supported and protected. We care deeply about making sure student voices are represented and students are free to say what they want, whether that’s positive or negative, about the University.”