This week, students across USF St. Petersburg will get the opportunity to vote for the future student-body president and vice president, as well as senate candidates. Voting takes place on PeteSync and extends Tuesday, Feb. 17 through Friday, Feb. 20. One of these four tickets will be your future student body president and vice president.
Teral Hilliard, president-elect
Year: Sophomore
Major: Political Science
Victor Sims, vice president-elect
Year: Senior
Major: Psychology
Campaign Slogan: “Together We Can”
Experience
Hilliard: Interim director of university relations, chair on senate committee of student services and audits, sustainability adviser for sex and relationships club, and a lay member of Intervarsity, the Black Student Association, and the Gardening Club.
Sims: President and founder of future alumni association, chair of homecoming committee, served as senator, hall council representative, vision 20/20 committee, alumni engagement committee, spirit committee for systemwide campus and intern for USF athletics marketing.
Platform
Hillard and Sims want to bring a Textbook Affordability Program to campus, work on making this campus more sustainable, bring more focus to individual students and make students aware of the services offered on campus – and improve those services.
Textbooks: Books are collected from students at the end of each semester, and they receive vouchers to get the next books they need.
Sustainability: “You can never get green enough,” Sims said. They hope to make USF St. Petersburg the greenest university in the country by making changes such as bringing reusable cups to The Reef and creating graduation attire made out of recycled materials.
Greater focus on individuals: Sims: “Without the individuals we can’t have clubs and organizations. We often focus so much attention to clubs and organizations that we forget there are other students on campus.”
Services: Hilliard: “We want to expand the services that we offer students. We want to expand the health and wellness center, we want to expand the study room hours and the hours of academic success center.”
Why you are running for office?
Hillard: “I am running for president because I want to work with the student body to make a community that is going to cause people to look at this university and say ‘that’s the place that I want to be; that’s my first choice. I am looking at all of the good things we have, and I am saying ‘how is it that we can get to the next level as a university?’”
Sims: “I am running because I love this campus. The only way I feel like we can make this campus better is if we decide to lead by example. It’s easy to say what we don’t have, it’s easy to say what we can’t have, but if I want to see things happen here, I have to do it.”
Ziya Kardas, president-elect
Year: Senior
Major: Business Management
Kyle Uber, vice president-elect
Year: Junior
Major: Business Management with a minor in legal studies
Campaign Slogan: “Zuber, the most unique ticket that this university has never seen.”
Experience
Kardas: “I know many people have been planning this for a long time, and I lack some of the student government experience. However, I have the resources downtown to get exposure to the community, as well as strong service, retail, and business experience. I have the ability to work hard and work from the ground up. Being a single parent and balancing school, I can handle high stress.”
Uber: Senator in SG, president of pre-law society, fundraising officer of offshore sailing club, and a member of the marine adventures club.
Platform
Kardas and Uber’s platform is focused on bringing focus into the community, attention to the arts, increasing sustainability, and providing support for commuters and graduate students, as well as parents. They also want to bridge the gap between the student body and administration to improve communication.
Community: Kardas: “I think awareness, exposure and creating a community culture here on campus by coordinating and teaming up with the community will help this university move further.”
Attention to the arts: As the city keeps expanding and bringing more focus to the arts, Kardas and Uber want this university to do that same. They want USFSP to increase their focus and support for all art mediums.
Support for commuters and graduate students: By increasing the support for these students, they can become more involved with events on campus. Kardas said they want to develop an app that would allow students to be more easily engaged in what is happening on campus. As Kardas plans to attend graduate school here, he wants graduate students to feel part of this campus.
Why are you running for office?
Kardas: “I desire to represent the vast majority of non-traditional students who are under-represented; for example: commuters, graduate-students, and parents # of which all categories I am or will be a part of during my term. Also, to continue representing the more traditional students. Furthermore, as President, I will utilize my bachelor’s in business and also bring a fresh and clean image to our student government.”
Uber: “I am running for vice president to be able to make a bigger impact on campus. I joined SG as a Senator to be able to listen to the students and promote the change that they want. I was told that senate has the most power because they have the ability to create and pass bill but what I have found is that senate cannot enact bills against administration limiting their ability to create change. Seeing that the student body President and Vice President work directly with administration to discuss, establish, and facilitate the student needs, that is where I feel I could best serve the students.”
Nia Joseph, president-elect
Year: Junior
Major: Health Sciences with a minor in Business
Chardonnay Tyson, vice-president elect
Year: Junior
Major: Psychology with a minor in Leadership Studies
Campaign Slogan
“Putting Students Back in Student Government”
Experience
Joseph: Student leader since her freshman year, founder of the Caribbean culture exchange organization, student assistant for multicultural affairs and a part of the Capital Investment Trust Fund committee for the USFSP system.
Tyson: Vice president of Caribbean cultural exchange, special events chairman of multicultural activities council, treasurer of black students association, secretary of the sex and relationship club, student assistant at the office of multicultural affairs.
Platform
Tyson said their platform consists of four main things: transparency, club and organization support, commuter recognition and student lead initiatives.
Transparency: Tyson:“Student government is known to be very exclusive and they lack communication. Our intention is to bridge the gap and increase conversations between the members of student government and the student body. Allowing the student body to see the good, the bad, and the ugly rather that patching everything up to look like it is perfect when in truth and in fact the organization is not.”
Club and organizations support: Tyson: “Clubs and orgs need more support from Student Government. We also looked in to creating a Council of Club Treasurers meet to keep clubs abreast of changes in the budget and the processes of receiving funding.”
Commuter Recognition: Joseph: “Commuters are students too and they are overlooked a lot and there are not really a lot of things geared towards commuters. And they make up the majority. We really want to make sure they feel like students and getting the college experience.”
Tyson: “We have talked about more commuter dine and dashes and adding something new to the campus on a whole. We would like to institute commuter assistants that will function in the same capacity as Resident Assistants with office hours, real life guidance and a wealth of information geared to get the commuter students more involved.”
Student Lead Initiative: Joseph: “Inspire students to not only feel like have to be in Student Government to make a difference. We want to inspire people to be able to do great things on campus, outside of student government.”
Tyson: “We always strived to lead from outside of SG. Now we are challenging other students to try and do the same.”
Top three issues on campus
Lack of club and organization support: Joseph:“Clubs and orgs are what make up the student body. We need to focus on their growth and their funding, making sure they have the means necessary to be successful.”
Lack of transparency: Joseph: “A lot of people don’t know what’s going on in Student Government, they have no idea. We really want to make sure the students on campus know and understand what’s happening. A lot of people are left in the dark about certain issues.”
Lack of communication: Joseph: “A lot of people are left in the dark about certain issues. We want to make sure we keep students informed about the certain initiatives passed in student government.”
Why should you lead the student body?
Tyson: “I believe that Nia and I Should be afforded the opportunity to Lead the Student body because we have viewed the entire USFSP experience in just about every position possible before we decided to run for this very influential position. Nia and I also strongly believe, You have to always remember you are a student first. We breathe transparency, we live clubs and orgs, we extend our hands to commuters and we believe in students being able to lead from outside of student government.”
Jozef Gherman, president-elect
Year: Junior
Major: Psychology
Juan Salazar, vice-president-elect
Year: Sophomore
Major: Psychology with a minor in Leadership
Campaign Slogan
“It’s time (#itstime); experiencing vision”
Experience
Gherman: President and founder of Political Question, treasurer for everyone’s education club, treasurer for club Hillel, treasurer and co-founder of the volleyball club, senator for three years, vice chair of approval and chief financial officer for the past two terms
Salazar: Involved with clubs and organizations, USFSP ambassador, deputy of the project office management
Platform
Gherman and Salazar’s vision is to elevate service for student veterans, support student careers, strengthen campus safety, recognize student leaders, foster school pride, promote transparency, embrace graduate students, grow bike care program and expand library hours.
Recognize student leaders: Students credited for leadership as a tradition of the university
Foster school pride: Gherman said they want to build school pride by providing more transportation to school games, while tailgating at the games with a USFSP tent and grill as well as a custom USFSP Rocky the Bull mascot.
Promote transparency: Gherman and Salazar want to improve access to student governing documents and meeting times, as well as create an online brochure on activity and service fees.
Embrace graduate students: They want more study space on campus with longer hours and an event that caters to graduate students—like the commuter dine and dash. Gherman said free coffee with low cost service that would benefit students.
Grow bike share program: Gherman wants to increase the amount of bikes offered to students and fix-yourself bike repair shop on campus.
Expand library resources: The ticket wants to express a student demand for longer library hours and bring a free printing program to the library.
Top three issues on Campus
Campus Safety: Gherman and Salazar said it’s important to strengthen campus safety. They want to put together a safe and free escort team and improve lighting around Poynter Park. Gherman said if a student doesn’t feel safe walking to their car at night, a student volunteer from the safe and free escort team would drive the student to his car on a golf cart.
Student Careers: Salazar said they want to team up with the career center and Bulls in the Burg discount program to help bring jobs and internships to campus.
Services for Veterans: Gherman and Salazar want to elevate services for veterans by creating the SG department of veteran affairs and offering veteran services at USFSP.
Gherman said currently the federal government funds public universities for student veterans.
“Right now, the money that goes to these veterans goes to Tampa,” said Gherman, “They have to go all the way to Tampa to get the services they rightfully deserve.”
Why should you lead the student body?
Gherman: “We should lead the student body because of our experience and vision—we are able to take problems that students face that haven’t been solved before and haven’t been dealt before and get them resolved. We have a dynamic approach for the way we will change the philosophy of Student Government—which is listen, learn, lead.”
Salazar: “I want to make a difference; let people know what SG is all about.”
