The Western Illinois University student body made their voices heard at this year’s Student Government Association’s election.
SGA Attorney General Aaron Terrile said there were about 667 ballots cast at this year’s election.
Terrile said 649 votes went towards the president and vice president positions.
Furthermore with 367 votes, Grant Reed was voted in as the new SGA president and Samir Almhiemid as vice president.
Newly elected President Grant Reed says his first order of business is to get the word out about the Student Government Association.
“So everybody needs to know what SGA is how we kind of function and how they can get involved with us,” Reed said.
Meanwhile, Reed wants to update the WIU website and purple post for students to receive more information about the association.
By connecting the students and the association he wants to start new events.
“I would also love to do like kind of Town hall style events, so that we can get face to face connections between our senators, our executive board members, and our students,” Reed said.
In the same way, he also wants to work on things differently from previous years which is for the executive board to be more of a team.
“I think we can work together a lot more and kind of partner up with each other and rely on each other, we don’t have to do things individually,” Reed said.
Along with the president and vice president positions to be more equal.
“We are all students, we are all here for the same reasons, we are all here to serve at SGA and to get things done for our students to make their experiences at Western better,” he said.
Currently as SGA chief of staff is said he is prepared for his new position as president.
“I think it’s a really great transition coming from being an executive board member to then becoming president” Reed said. “You kind of know how the executive board functions and the roles that each person plays and the duties that they have.”
In addition, he said, his current position will benefit him when looking for cabinet members.
Reed is looking forward to working with elected Vice President Samir Almhiemid who said he wants to work with the WIU administration to get the information out to the student body on what the administration is working on.
There were five Senator-At-Large officials announced on election day named Summer Tracy, Nancy Davila, Vicente Reyna, Sentual Strong and Margarita Sotelo.
Currently, the student member of the Board of Trustees Wil Gradle will return for a second term in the upcoming school year. These newly elected officials will take their positions in the Fall.
