Last week, Mariel Jackson and I were honored to be officially sworn in as your new student body president and vice president. We are so excited to get started helping students and improving our campus. Firstly, I want to congratulate Roshan Palli on an excellent term as president. With his leadership, we were able to bring multiple new student government programs from concept to success. Also, he did an outstanding job working with administration to make the student voice heard, contributing most notably to the upcoming changes to the alcohol policy.

It is with the groundwork laid

for success that we begin our tenure. We love this campus for many of the same reasons that I’m sure you do. The nature of the campus experience — to instantly be welcomed, accepted and supported — has a magnetic effect on both the students and the guests who find themselves passing through campus. It is the overall inclusivity of our campus through which we seek to enable each and every organization to recreate and further develop. We will once again strive to make student government open and welcoming to every corner of our campus.

Our focus this coming year will be supporting student organizations, improving student safety and making student government more open and inclusive. We are committed to listening to and interacting with students more than ever.

In addition to potential new initiatives, we are continuously looking for ways to improve our existing programs, like Cats Cab, so that they can help as many students as efficiently as possible. As a future engineer, I am always thinking of ways to fix and improve.

We look forward to advocating for students at the highest levels of this university, commonwealth and nation. As the alcohol policy takes shape this summer, campus infrastructure continues to change, a new student center and even more lies on the horizon. It is an exciting time to be a part of the Big Blue Nation.

In such a dynamic campus environment, it is so important that you come to us with your ideas and your concerns. Our doors are always open — please feel free to call, email or stop by our office in the student center just down from Panda Express. I will be here all summer and would love to talk with you. Come see us, and have a great break.