After winning an unopposed election Thursday, Corina Tapscott and her running mates Ryan Boyd and Katherine Hofland will assume the top leadership positions in Undergraduate Student Government Downtown.
Tapscott, current vice president of services, will be taking over as president after incumbent Frank Smith III decided not to run.
Read on to meet your next heads of USGD and find out what they plan to do once they assume their positions for the next school year.
Corina Tapscott, President
Tapscott, a social work sophomore, said that serving as vice president of services this year motivated her to run for president.
“I really enjoyed being the VP of Services,” she said. “It’s really what sparked my fire for being in student government and I really enjoy it, and it also taught me how powerful our students are. You can get a few students in a room and truly make change happen.”
Working under current President Frank Smith III this year also allowed Tapscott to gain invaluable insight into how USGD operates, she said. In Smith’s administration, Tapscott noted the importance of quickly staffing and training leaders to be able to hit the ground running in the fall.
Tapscott has begun staffing her administration for the coming year by meeting with the deans of the Downtown colleges to get a feel for the students who will be on her team. She said she also hopes to be able to be one of the first faces that incoming freshman see next year.
Tapscott promised total transparency in all aspects of student government in her campaign.
“We want to make sure that students are aware of every single thing that’s being done in student government, as well as that they are welcome to be involved in all processes of student government,” she said.
Executive board meetings would be open for any student to attend at any time, and Tapscott said she hopes to ensure easy contact with members of the board. She has offered to make her personal cellphone number available.
Tapscott said the experience of running unopposed has been bittersweet.
“There’s definitely some aspects to it that are kind of nice,” she said. “Our campaign is not concerned with other tickets and trying to be different than them. … It allows us to be really student focused.
“It’s a little bitter in the sense that I wish more students were engaged,” she continued. “I wish we had five tickets running against us.”
Ryan Boyd, Vice President of Public Policy
Boyd, a sophomore majoring in public service and public policy, said he got involved with student government when the athletics fee bill passed last year. He said he was concerned about how it was passed.
“I vowed that I did not want to see that happen again,” Boyd said.
In last year’s election, Boyd ran with Alexis Kramer against Smith, whose ticket included Tapscott. Boyd does not foresee any problems with working against his former opposition.
“Corina and I were friends back then, and we’re friends now,” he said.
Boyd said his ticket tried to pick up Tapscott last year, but she had already pledged to the other campaign.
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Boyd’s position would focus on gaining equitable resources for the Downtown student body and making sure the Downtown campus does not feel like a branch off from the Tempe campus.
Some issues Boyd said he would focus on include finding a way to get paperwork that would normally need to go to Tempe processed downtown, making ASU Wi-Fi more dependable and expanding parking.
Boyd said he played a major role in organizing a 50-student protest against higher-education budget cuts and wants to get more people involved in public policy issues.
“We need to have our people here at City Hall talking,” he said.
Katherine Hofland, Vice President of Services
Hofland is a double major in creative writing and public service and public policy, and the president of the I Always Get Consent movement.
Though she has no experience with student government, her time at I Always Get Consent made her want to become vice president of services, she said.
“I understand how difficult it can be for student organizations to get even simple things done,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s so much red tape that it is inconvenient to even get a simple message out.”
Hofland said she wants to simplify things for student organizations through better communication and more student-leader training.
Transitioning from the end of one school year to the next can also be a difficult process for student organizations. Hofland said she is hoping to make this transition as smooth as possible for these groups by informing student leaders about how USGD is involved with their organization right off the bat.
“We want, in the beginning of the year, to hold a large training that would inform all of the new executives about these processes so they can start off the year in just as strong of a position as the organization was at the end of the previous year,” she said.
Hofland said she wants to always keep the needs of the students at the forefront of the student government’s agenda.
“I want to ensure that all of our actions are from student opinion, and not just the ones directly from student organizations, but from other students too, who have more wants and desires for what they feel like they could accomplish for this campus,” she said. “We want to make sure we’re doing everything we can in order to help them.”
Contact the reporter at Johanna.Huckeba@asu.edu
