The student body of Hamline University has wrapped up HUSC voting for this year. Many positions only had one candidate, or one pair of candidates running, but that didn’t stop the candidates from campaigning anyway.

Hamline University junior Raina Meyer and sophomore Ruben Dominguez have been elected co-presidents for next academic year. Meyer and Dominguez acknowledged being the only candidates vying for the offices, but they were not deterred from campaigning and talking to students about issues important to them. 

“We created an Instagram account where we hosted live streams every week leading up to the election, which got like a couple hundred views each,” Meyer said. “We worked really hard to make ourselves available, even in a digital space.”

Meyer and Dominguez ran on a platform dedicated to meeting students’ needs by making services more accessible and advertising the valuable resources we already have on campus. 

The pair say that campus has a lot of hidden gems and services that could really help students, but not enough people know about them. Meyer works at the Women’s Resource Center, and said “we offer free menstrual care products and not many people who could utilize these products know about us.” The Women’s Resource Center is open to all Hamline students, regardless of gender, and can provide products like free tampons, pads, menstrual cups and occasionally offer free birth control. 

“Students have been expressing an issue, or something that’s been an issue for awhile at Hamline, which is the lack of awareness of resources available to them,” Meyer said.

Meyer and Dominguez want to address this and plan to form a concerted marketing campaign to inform students about the resources Hamline has to offer. 

Dominguez encourages students to check out the Food Resource Center. 

“[The Food Resource Center] is growing, but there’s still so many students who haven’t gone through it yet,” Dominguez said. “It’s open to any student, and they don’t need to provide any income information or anything like that.”  

They were not the only ones on the ballot this past month. Kylie Clark, Maddie Swanson and Mohamed Shukri were elected to serve as the sophomore class representatives. Lisette Guzman, Emily Hilderbrand and Kenzie Harstad were elected to represent the junior class. Finally, Haylee Ziton, Jessie Luévano and Alice Kellner will serve as the senior class reps. Along with the office elections, two HUSC constitutional amendments also passed.

The first was a resolution to rename the executive positions from president and vice-president to be “external president” and “internal president.” That resolution passed with 75.8% of the vote, meaning Meyer will serve as the external president and Dominguez will be the internal president.

The second resolution was designed to add guidelines and procedures to the HUSC Collaboration Fund. The fund is set up to allow individuals, clubs and organizations to collaborate with HUSC to create events and initiatives to benefit the student body. This amendment has added recommended bylaws and language to make the fund clearer and more accessible for its usage. That amendment passed with 85.8% of the vote. 

Meyer and Dominguez will officially start their term at the last HUSC meeting of the year. Students are encouraged to attend weekly General Assembly HUSC meetings during Convo Hour, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. every Tuesday. The co-president-elects will be creating their executive office team, hiring and making appointments for next year in the coming months. Students interested in applying for positions or wanting to get involved with HUSC should monitor their email as more information becomes available, likely in the fall. Students can also follow HUSC on Instagram at @YourVoiceHUSC.