ASW is hosting the 2022 election cycle and filling the positions of president, Vice President and clubs president. There are five students running for the three positions.
ASW Candidates for 2022–23 Election
- Presidential candidate
- Brynlie Green Morris, junior justice studies major
- Vice president candidates
- Cris Mora-Rubio, junior public health major
- Ashlee Szwedko, sophomore neuroscience major
- Clubs president candidates
- Juanita Galvis, first-year marketing and communication custom major
- Grace von Mettenheim, junior environmental studies major
Voting for these positions opened to undergraduate students Wednesday, March 2 on Canvas, and will close March 4.
Increasing student engagement with ASW events and resources has been a main focus across many of the campaigns, according to the candidates for these positions.
The Forum spoke to the candidates to get more insight on who they are, what their hopes are for ASW and why they are the best fit for their position.
President
There is one student campaigning for ASW President, Brynlie Green Morris.
Brynlie Green Morris is a junior Legacy Scholar majoring in justice studies and working towards an Honors degree.
“I’m originally from Syracuse, Utah, but now I’m happily married and proudly in my own home in West Bountiful,” Green said in an email.
She is currently the ASW speaker of senate and said they have been involved with ASW in many other capacities and branches. They have also served as the student honors council historian, and was a cheerleader in her first year.
Green said, “I adore the arts, and constantly love to be either drawing, crocheting, making earrings or studying fashion if I’m not working on school.”
Green said they were inspired to join ASW when they first came to Westminster and saw the work that was being done behind the scenes.
“I hadn’t considered that I might run for president myself one day, but I did know that I wanted to be a part of learning the internal operations of a small-scale government, and see how I could improve it,” Green said.
Green said she thinks it’s important to increase engagement with the other branches of ASW and the resources they offer, including grants like the Opportunity and Eco Warrior Fund.
“In a time before I came to Westminster, the ASW Events branch was actually separate,” Green said. “I believe this made the other branches more visible, especially Senate which is at the root of most constitutional decisions made within ASW.”
Green said they think if engagement is increased here, while still working in conjunction to get students involved to design the events they want to see. ASW will in turn see greater engagement and visibility with all the resources that benefit students, according to Green.
“What is crucial, is getting students into office in any capacity, whether it’s on the clubs council, the eco-warrior council, events team or the many things in between,” Green said.
Vice President
There are two students campaigning for the position of ASW Vice President, Ashlee Szwedko and Cris Mora-Rubio.
Ashlee Szwedko, a sophomore neuroscience major, is currently serving as ASW events president and is on Westminster’s cheer team.
Szwedko said she became interested in joining ASW after the COVID-19 pandemic, and wanted to find a place on campus where she felt she belonged. Szwedko said she also wanted to be able to show other students how great the opportunity of joining ASW can be.
“As events president, I have seen how low student engagement is with ASW,” Szwedko said in an email. “My main goal this year has been to increase student engagement, which has been incredibly difficult.”
Szwedko said she plans to continue to collaborate with ASW Creative to assist with advertisement creation, as well as increase ASW’s overall social media presence.
“I also plan on reaching out to campus partners that can spread the word about our events and to find students that may want to get involved with ASW,” Szwedko said.
Szwedko said she believes she is the best fit for the position of vice president because of her previous leadership experience and her care for the Westminster community.
“As events president, I have learned about the structure of ASW and the best ways it can succeed,” Szwedko said. “I have gained many connections in the greater campus community that I can use to benefit ASW if elected as vice president.”
Cris Mora-Rubio, junior public health major with a business minor, is a first-generation college student from Park City, Utah who is also campaigning for the position of vice president.
“Being first generation, [college] is something I’ve been working towards for a long time,” Mora-Rubio said.
Mora-Rubio said he has been determined to make his college experience the best it could be. Now that he has the opportunity to run for ASW office, he wants to make sure it lives up to his own expectations, as well as the expectations of other students, according to Mora-Rubio.
Mora-Rubio said student engagement has been exceptionally low recently due to COVID-19 and the lack of in-person events.
As vice president, Mora-Rubio said he hopes to use his position to highlight and uplift other members of ASW who are working to increase student engagement.
“I really am looking forward to working with events and getting them more advertisement and more visibility,” Mora-Rubio said.
He said has some ideas on how to increase engagement with clubs, including a monthly Instagram post that will highlight “Cris’s question of the month”.
“I’ll go around every month to [highlight]a new club […] and ask [members]a question about their club,” Mora-Rubio said. “I hope that that gets more engagement with clubs, highlighting what’s cool about them and what’s going on.”
Mora-Rubio said he believes he is the best fit for the position of vice president because he brings in a lot of energy.
“I know that being a good leader, it’s not so much about you taking the reins, it’s about letting other people show their strengths,” Mora-Rubio said. “I really just wanna be like that extra set of hands to help out our clubs teams, creative team and our events team.”
Clubs President
There are two students campaigning for the position of ASW Clubs President, Juanita Galvis and Grace von Mettenheim.
Grace von Mettenheim, junior environmental studies major, said she is an avid skier and loves anything outdoors. She said she also loves to create art and has recently gotten really into crocheting.
She currently serves on the board of the Westminster Ski and Snowboard Club and is also on ASW club council.
“[Being on ASW club council] has given me a really good inside view of what it means to be a club on campus and the inner workings of it,” Mettenheim said.
Mettenheim said her experience on clubs council made her excited about all of the opportunities students have to engage on campus.
Mettenheim said, “I feel like student engagement is just absurdly low right now, so by being clubs president, I really want to work on creating strong foundations within the clubs we already have—as well as the new ones that come about—so that they have a foundation to build on and thrive off of.”
Mettenheim said it’s hard for clubs to spread the word and get students excited without a strong foundation.
“I just really want to focus on increasing engagement and make all these wonderful students know that you have so many opportunities at Westminster,” Mettenheim said.
Mettenheim said shewants to leave an impact on Westminster by helping students understand how to find ways to maximize their time on campus.
“I don’t want students just to float through and go through the motions, so I really want to make sure there’s a feeling of excitement on campus instead of just like, ‘well, here we are,’” Mettenheim said.
Juanita Galvis, a Legacy Scholar and first-year student in the Honors program with a custom marketing and communication major, is also running for ASW clubs president.
Galvis was born in Columbia, South America and her family moved to the US four years ago. She is the president of the International Student Association on campus. She’s passionate about learning from other cultures and diversity in general.
“I think I would be a good person to represent the clubs here on campus because as a [first-year student], I feel like I have a lot of innovative ideas that I can bring,” Galvis said. “One of them would be advocating for more informal clubs.”
Galvis said she feels like the clubs Westminster has right now, the majority of them are larger organizations, like clubs for reproductive rights and diversity.
“I feel like the point of clubs is to share and explore passions, even if those are super simple things,” Galvis said. “I feel like we need more clubs like a video game club, or an art club.”
Galvis said she thinks student engagement with clubs on campus is important in order to bond with people who share similar passions, and also those that don’t. Clubs are an opportunity to try out things one normally wouldn’t and learn to see the world from other perspectives, according to Galvis.
“It is through clubs that I have met my closest friends and I have discovered passions I didn’t know I had before,” Galvis said.
Galvis said herultimate goal is to be a source on campus to connect students with clubs that could benefit them.
Galvis said, “Clubs are such an important place for personal development and growth, and if I could get every student on campus—or a majority of them—to try out new things and grow more personally, I feel like that would be really cool.”.
