Third-year College student Clay Dickerson, fourth-year College student Princess Wuraola Olubuse-Omisore and second-year Commerce student Michael Mitchell will form a presidential ticket in the upcoming Student Council presidential election. The group calls their campaign “A Brighter Tomorrow” and is running on the pillars of equity, unity and empowerment.
Within the Brighter Tomorrow ticket, Dickerson is running for President, Wuraola is running for Vice President for Administration and Mitchell is running for Vice President of Organizations.
According to Dickerson, the members of Brighter Tomorrow decided to run together because of the diverse perspectives and experiences they could each bring to their roles. Beyond their positions in Student Council, Dickerson said the group has a variety of different interests — Mitchell studies Commerce, Wuraola is studying Global Public Health and Dickerson is studying history and drama.
“Student Council leadership has never had this diverse of representation, as oftentimes our leadership is almost entirely represented by politics or politics-adjacent majors,” Dickerson said. “Our prospective uniqueness as a ticket, combined with our individual passion for service and Student Council, [will] create a team that can and will do so much good.”
The Brighter Tomorrow candidates say that because of their backgrounds and experiences, they hope to focus on the needs of first-generation, low-income students, enhanced utilization of Student Council’s budget and increased accessibility of Student Council to the University’s student body.
Each candidate has three specific policy plans falling within each of the group’s overarching pillars of equity, unity, and empowerment.
Equity
The Brighter Tomorrow ticket hopes to address inequities in resource accessibility for individual students and student groups. As a first-generation, low-income student himself, Dickerson wants to be a voice for this population and champion initiatives such as an FGLI advisory board. Dickerson said that the premise of attending to the FGLI community extends to his general approach to the presidential position — he wants to be a face-to-face, action-driven leader.
“When you have students like my FGLI peers quite literally living paycheck to paycheck … I can’t wait a month to have my meeting about an initiative that is seeking to make a difference for them as soon as possible,” Dickerson said.
Dickerson says many do not realize that FGLI students are everywhere across Grounds, and aims to uplift this group of students to strengthen the entire University community.
“You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and sometimes your weakest link can’t control what’s bringing them down,” Dickerson said. “My goal is to help alleviate that inequity for them.”
Dickerson plans to also lobby for equitable reservation access for contracted independent organizations, particularly within the University’s arts programs. Dickerson, a drama major, said he has had frustrating experiences with requesting rehearsal spaces, and that he hopes to improve equitable reservation access for all CIOs.
In addition to uplifting CIOs, Dickerson’s final policy within the branch of equity is to develop a new agency, called Cavalier Care, within Support and Access Services. It would be an agency solely dedicated to student care, providing STI testing, dental insurance and other health-related services.
Mitchell’s policies within the equity branch focus on the finances of Student Council. He aims to increase transparency in funding for appropriations by publishing an annual appropriations report and launching a website which will display funding data from the year prior. Mitchell said CIOs could benefit from observing the funding of other clubs and Student Council could benefit from analyzing trends of these organizations’ spending.
“[The website] is really eye opening,” Mitchell said. “It's good for the clubs, because you can filter by your club and see the trends. It's also great for us, because we can highlight areas that we didn't realize were being [overfunded].”
Mitchell also hopes to streamline the CIO onboarding process with a hub on Canvas and increase accountability for internal spending within Student Council by publishing a quarterly spending breakdown of the student council’s budget.
In order to increase equity as VPA, Wuraola said she hopes to ensure that no student or organization gets left behind in terms of funding. She will enact this by installing a funding support system if students or groups have their financial requests rejected, as well as holding informative workshops on how to access funding resources.
Wuraola also intends to expand technology access to low-income students. According to Wuraola, the University currently offers loans, rather than grants, for technology, and she believes these loans can currently act as a barrier for low-income students to access necessary resources.
These candidates hope that policies focused on increased representation for FGLI students, better funding transparency and established grants will help increase equity in access for marginalized students.
Unity
Through various policies established by their respective positions, the Brighter Tomorrow campaign hopes to increase a sense of unity among University community members. Dickerson’s biggest initiative within the unity pillar is to make the student member of the Board of Visitors elected by the student body rather than appointed by the BOV and a selection committee. He said there are two students at the University whose role is to speak on behalf of the students — the Student Council President and the student member of the BOV.
“It wouldn’t make sense if the president was appointed, so I don't think it does either if a student member [of the BOV] is,” Dickerson said. “This [policy] is something that I think is very reasonably achievable.”
Dickerson said he felt this policy will be achievable after Governor Youngkin, who has vetoed past efforts by the University’s Faculty Senate to make the student representative position elected, finishes his term this fall. With a new governor in office, Dickerson hopes that Student Council and the Faculty Senate can collaborate to achieve this goal.
Creating a Student Council alumni relations agency is another policy initiative Dickerson advocates for. This way, Student Council could connect more with alumni and establish an ongoing list of Student Council alumni. Dickerson hopes this could help Student Council receive funding from alumni and eventually unite alumni of student groups such as Student Council, Honor Committee and the University Judiciary Committee.
Dickerson also hopes Student Council can play a larger role in supporting student advocacy organizations, by introducing grassroots liaisons to Student Council to build this line of communication and support.
“By giving [grassroots organizations] membership [with liaisons], I think we build a more unified Student Council that can truly act on behalf of as many people as we say we’d like to,” Dickerson said.
Within the unity pillar, Mitchell says his passion project is creating a CIO Connection Framework and Cross-Organizations Collaborations. The initiative is a two-year project, according to Mitchell, something he could accomplish as a current second-year student. He explained that the connection project would enable more CIOs to connect members and co-host events, and hopes to establish a formal CIO networking program, in which student leaders would be able to meet with potential collaborators from other CIOs and exchange ideas before the beginning of each semester.
“I hate that you go around the Fall Activities Fair and you see a club that seems cool, but if you don’t join it, you’ll never hear from them again,” Mitchell said. “They’re all independent organizations, but I don’t feel like they have to operate independently.”
Next, Mitchell hopes to bridge the divide between Student Council and Greek Life, which he says is currently characterized by a huge disconnect. Mitchell said he would love to appoint a fraternity and sorority life liaison within Student Council to advocate for non-funding-related support. Additionally, he hopes to enhance the Fall Activities Fair experience with improvements to the table layout and potentially moving the fair, usually hosted from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in August, to later in the day so it is less hot.
Wuraola shared her desire to publish a public project tracker to increase visibility of Student Council’s initiatives for the student body, which would consequently minimize stalled initiatives. Like Dickerson, she also hopes to develop a stronger alumni network by tracking and engaging past leaders, as well as establishing a record of past leaders’ initiatives and challenges.
Wuraola’s last initiative involved strengthening the University’s commitment to indigenous communities. She would like to increase Native American representation in Student Council and build partnerships with local communities.
“We should live up to our land acknowledgments and show our commitment to uplifting indigenous voices,” Wuraola said. “...It’s important to do outreach because there’s no one better to help understand what needs to be done.”
By connecting student groups with each other and increasing student leadership alumni engagement, as well as increasing transparency surrounding Student Council initiatives, these candidates hope to increase unity among students and alumni.
Empowerment
The Brighter Tomorrow campaign hopes to empower University students to be the best they can within the classroom and outside of it, by providing increased resources to individual students as well as student groups.
Dickerson stressed the importance of auditing the internal budget of Student Council and redirecting unused funding as his first policy point. He said that some Student Council agencies have low utilization rates, meaning that some of the committees established to provide services for students do not use all of their allocated funding. Dickerson said that an internal audit could allow funding to be redirected towards agencies who use all of their allocated funding each year and are in need of an expanded budget, such as the Textbook Access Office.
“CIOs complain about not having enough money, and the problem is, because we don’t even use our own, how are we going to support them?” Dickerson said.
He discussed other initiatives including a free-to-use career closet, which is a rack of business clothes that students can access. He said surrounding universities have something similar institutionalized, and that clothes should embolden, rather than hinder, students.
“Talk about something that’s empowering … having a good outfit is the most tangible thing you can do,” Dickerson said.
Lastly, Dickerson hopes to renew Cavalier Advantage grants and establish a technology fund. In the past, the grants existed as $5 installments five times per year to supplement laundry and printing costs, which are not happening this year. The technology fund would supplement costs for repairs and loaners.
Mitchell’s idea of empowerment is in relation to CIOs — he would like to install a comprehensive funding guide for CIOs. He would also like to increase storage solutions available for CIOs and implement a CIO mentorship program in which established groups could help newer and/or smaller CIOs develop. These initiatives would allow all CIOs to have access to the resources they need, empowering them to accomplish their goals.
Wuraola plans to provide more detailed and accurate accounts of Student Council’s funding and policy histories to students for greater transparency. She also hopes to implement smarter budgeting for Student Council using the “use it or redirect it” concept both Dickerson and Mitchell mentioned, and extend funding access to more student groups. She also described broad goals of making Student Council more accessible to students by restructuring the website to provide clearer information.
Dickerson, Mitchell and Wuraola plan to reallocate funding to students and agencies that are in need of increased support, in order to empower students and groups to achieve their goals during their time at the University.
Message to Students
Brighter Tomorrow collectively focuses on themes of assisting underrepresented populations of the student body, redirecting funds to improve effectiveness of Student Council and promoting cohesion between student council and student groups.
“We are a collective movement,” Dickerson said, addressing student voters. “This is a collaborative learning and leading experience, and by placing your trust in me, I hope that I can lead us to a brighter tomorrow.”
A debate will be held by The Cavalier Daily between the two Presidential candidates, Dickerson and Benefield, at 6 p.m. in Newcomb Hall March 2. Voting will run March 3 through March 5.
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