SGA elects 2018–2019 Executive Board
April 23, 2018
The Student Government Association announced its Executive Board for the 2018–2019 academic year at its April 17 meeting after elections.
After the six-day voting period, held on OASIS for the first time, students elected sophomore cinema and television arts major Jazmin Bryant as president, sophomore dance major Kierah King as vice president, freshman cinema and television arts major Simone Heim as vice president of Communications, and junior American Sign Language-English interpretation major Kinza Zia as vice president of Finance. The four will lead SGA’s executive board in the upcoming academic year.
More than 100 students voted online in this year’s election, and voting for SGA senators will open on OASIS on April 23, according to current SGA President and senior business and entrepreneurship major Malik Woolfork.
Coordinator of Student Leadership and Faculty Adviser David Keys said he feels confident about SGA’s future under Bryant because she had Woolfork as a mentor.
He added that he would like to see SGA continue its work providing forums on the curriculum and the student center, scheduled to open in fall 2019.
“They’ve done so much this year,” Keys said. “[I hope] that they continue bringing students together with faculty, administration and staff just to talk.”
Heim said campaigning for the election was demanding, but she is excited to work to improve engagement between the Columbia community at large and SGA.
“The external [communications] department has done an amazing job with all of the social media platforms this year, and I want to expand upon that,” she said. “For me, [that] would be having a better way to get information out to students.”
Woolfork said it is bittersweet to be graduating and leaving Columbia and SGA behind, but he is pleased with the incoming Executive Board.
After joining SGA as a senator for the Dance Department during spring 2017, King said she wanted a new challenge: representing a larger number of students.
King added that she wants to enhance collaboration among students from different departments and to make study-abroad options available to a wider range of majors.
“That feels like a lot of missed opportunities that I want to build on,” she said. “I’m a huge travel geek. It’s a good thing to have cultural knowledge and gain a different perspective of the world and put it into your own work.”
Bryant said she has three main goals as president: make sure students’ voices are heard; bridge the communication gap among administration, faculty, staff and students; and recruit more students to come to Columbia and join SGA.
“I look forward to putting a lot of myself into this organization and making the position my own next school year,” she said. “We are here to represent the student body and make sure that their concerns and voices are being heard.”
