While COVID-19 may have put a hitch in the election process, class officers have set goals for what they each want to accomplish this year. 

The annual SGA class officer elections concluded Monday. Freshman and senior classes have a total of 13 officers each while sophomore and junior classes have a total of 11 officers each.

Freshman class president Alli Dimmit is a political science major from Sunny Naples, Florida who was involved with the student council throughout her years in high school. 

“I think through doing student council in high school I was able to kind of really find and refine the talents that I feel like the Lord is giving me,” Dimmit said. “I love encouraging others leading others, and so I feel like SGA kind of fits the talents I feel like the Lord has blessed me with.”

After hearing about SGA during Wildcat Week, Dimmit got involved and ultimately was elected freshman class president despite campaigning being a challenge. 

“I love being able to lead others to community whether that’s through me or through other people; so it was extremely difficult to have to let people know I want to be their advocate without having the underlying personal like connection with them,” Dimmit said. “The way I did that was really through social media. I would just look in people’s bios and like you see the ACU ’24 and I would follow them, and then I really tried to memorize faces and names.”

Overall, Dimmit is looking forward to working with her officer team and already has some goals in mind. 

“We all lost a lot of really special opportunities and especially our senior class whether that be like things like senior prom or whether that be graduation, so I think as a freshman class something we’re hoping to do is recreate some of those events not in the same light, but in the light of being able to recreate the community we missed out on,” Dimmit said. 

Sophomore class president Rinni Finley, marketing major from Allen, was involved in a run-off election with one candidate after the initial elections took place. 

“I taped up new flyers that advertised the runoff and continued posting on social media along with the help of some of my dear friends who posted on their social media accounts as well,” Finley said. “I was overcome with joy and excitement as this is something I wanted to do so badly.” 

As far as campaigning goes, Finley was able to work with other now elected officers to connect with the sophomore student body. 

“My friend Tea Lewis helped me design flyers, which I placed under all the doors in Smith-Adams hall and social media posts that I posted all through campaigning and voting,” Finley said. “I also set up a booth in the Campus Center with my now vice president, Skye Gill and a sophomore senator Julia Perry, where we handed out candy and informed people about voting.” 

Similarly to the freshmen, the sophomores have goals they want to complete this semester.

“We have already had a fantastic discussion regarding recycling and mental health on campus, and we have lots of ideas on changing and improving ACU, specifically with those two things,” Finley said. “I am working with a passionate group of people who all want to see ACU and its sophomore class strive and succeed.”

Senior class president Jenny Gower, ministry and vocation major from Katy, has been involved in SGA as a student senator for the last two years and found that already being aware of the election process was super useful this year. 

“I relied on social media for campaigning because I knew I could reach more seniors through that platform since we all live off-campus and some students aren’t on campus as much due to online classes,” Gower said. “Thankfully getting electronic signatures didn’t make this process harder, it was a really good change that reduced the possible spread of COVID-19 since there was no exchanging of pens and paper.” 

Gower is excited to be working as senior class president and has already worked with her team to identify some of their goals for the year. 

“This year my team and I have a wide range of goals we want to accomplish that include improving handicap accessibility, reducing the use of plastic bags on campus, working on the communication between organizations on campus and more,” Gower said. “We also want to provide the senior class with COVID safe events for them to participate in. Community is heavily stressed during your freshman year at ACU, but this is something we want to provide even for seniors. We hope to provide them with things that they can enjoy during their last year here.”

SGA meetings have started their regular schedule for the year and continue to work with and represent ACU’s student body.