Executive members of the Student Council face off to serve as President, Vice President of Administration, and Vice President of Organizations in this year’s election. Accessibility, financial access, and safety are key concerns following the University’s year of administrative shakeups and legal disputes.
“Our UVA” Candidates:
President: Micah Andrews, Chief of Support and Access Services (“SAS”)
Vice President of Administration (“VPA”): Emily Frost, Director of University Relations
Vice President of Organizations (“VPO”): Benjamin Lawerence, Director of Airbus in Support and Access Services
Andrews’s eyes are on fixing and expanding resources that make the daily lives of students easier, a nod to her track record as Chief of SAS. Andrew’s approach relies on a bottom-up approach to meeting students where they are, specifically, first-generation, rural, low-income students. Her ticket is committed to addressing the growing student housing affordability crisis and mental health accessibility. VPA candidate Emily Frost aims to improve the student body’s relationship with the student council by livestreaming general body meetings and making sure student council initiatives are transparent on Grounds. VPO candidate Lawrence intends to transform the transfer student experience and activities fair while improving the interviewing process for organizations on Grounds.
“Dream Ahead” Candidates:
President: Michael Mitchell, Vice President of Organizations
Vice President of Administration (“VPA”): Saehee Perez, Chief of Cabinet
Vice President of Organizations (“VPO”): Harper Tran
Mitchell focuses on a fiscal approach to protecting student self-governance and supporting the student body. One of Mitchell’s priorities is establishing a $5 million Student Council endowment. Alongside him, VPA candidate Perez intends to transform StudCo’s internal affairs towards efficiency and inclusivity of marginalized groups. VPO candidate Tran wants to increase transparency and organization of CIO’s as a way to help students build and protect different communities on Grounds.
The Interview:
All parties were asked the same questions about how they would serve the student body. Andrews’s ticket was interviewed all at once due to scheduling, while Mitchell’s ticket was interviewed separately.
Q1: Why are you running for student council?
Andrews: “My campaign is primarily focused on accessibility for students in a plethora of different ways. The reason why I’m running is because I think we need somebody in the presidency who is truly an advocate for student voice, particularly after this past year. I’m personally first-generation and low-income. A lot of the policies that I’m pushing for directly benefit the community, and every single position I’ve had in student council this far has been about accessibility in one way or another.”
Mitchell: “It’s been really eye-opening serving as [Clay Dickerson’s] vice president. I’ve seen him step into this role, step out of his comfort zone and grow as a leader…I also think, just as the president, you do have a louder voice. Again, your responsibility and my responsibility would go from being the voice of the clubs to the voice of the student body at large, which is something that is very heavy. It’s not something that I take lightly, but I am going to work tirelessly day in and day out to do that and to support the students to the best of my ability.”
Frost: “I’m running because, through my time in administration, I’ve gotten a lot of ideas of how administration can be improved, how we can use the administration branch to support Student Council’s long-term mission, financial stability, and make it more accessible to the student body.”
Perez: “I’m running for VPA because in my fourth year, I think the biggest way I can make an impact is to make StudCo itself more efficient and speed up the implementation of important initiatives because they provide students with a lot of good resources.”
Lawrence: “I wanted to run because I think it’s really important to have advocates in government positions, so as the VPO, you have a designated function from the University that you need to fulfill, and you are still elected. You have to be accountable to your peers and the people who elected you — the clubs and organizations at UVA are what make our community vibrant, fun, and interesting. Being in a position where you can help them and do good things for them is gratifying for me.”
Tran: “After becoming a club leader, I learned more about the CIO ecosystems. More about the difficulties CIO’s face…that really motivated me to want to run for VPO and improve these processes, increase transparency, stability, and accessibility. If clubs aren’t functioning as well as they could be, if they don’t know what’s available to them, they can’t effectively create these communities that students really need.”
Q2: What do you want the student body to know about you and your campaign that isn’t on your website or social media?
Andrews: “I can speak for all three of us: we really want to come across as the ticket that truly cares about student voice and student advocacy. Particularly with the accessibility policies that we’re pushing for…these are things that I have worked on extensively in the past. I founded Cavalier Health. I founded the Cavalier Career Closet. I am incredibly intertwined with Support and Access Services, as are Ben and Emily. These are things that we not only have already been working on, but that we really, truly care about because of our backgrounds, particularly because of my background as a first-generation student. I feel like representation, increasing accessibility for students, and just putting students first is our north star and has been throughout our entire time in Student Council…that’s just what we want to emphasize the most.”
Mitchell: “What I want students to know is that we are here for them…you would be so surprised as to how many students say we don’t know what Student Council does. We exist for students; I want them to know what’s going on. I want them to know how to contact us, and I want them to want to know we’re here for them. Like, whatever the issue is, bring it to us because nothing is too big, nothing is too small.”
Perez: “We’re a really fun team — us three, we make up a very fun group of people.”
Tran: “I think that something that’s really central to me for this campaign is obviously after the year we’ve had, UVA students feel a level of uncertainty and insecurity…that, and a loss of faith in student governance itself that really needs to be rectified. I think that part of our campaign is educating the student body. I think that is one of the core values and importance of student self-governance, and I think that’s something that’s currently lacking. A lot of our policies connect back to ensuring representative polling of students, to making sure that materials and resources are clarified effectively and in places that students are actually going to access and look at. I think right now, especially in a time of difficulty…this is going to be really important going forward, and it’s our job to help students learn about what’s out there and to really improve their experiences.”
Q3: Each ticket has pillars that emphasize certain values as central to how they will lead the student body. What does implementing these pillars look like? Specifically, for students frustrated with the current University administration, how do you ensure you are not maintaining the status quo after previous years of low voter turnout?
Andrews: “I’d like to start out by saying that, like every single thing that I set out to do as chief of Support and Access Services…happened this year. I came into it wanting to found Cavalier Health, wanting to have dental insurance for students, wanting to fix Airbus. We weren’t having data collection before Ben was the director, and all of those things have occurred. So, I have a track record for following through on exactly what I said I would do.”
“My campaign promises are to have better transfer student support, particularly with our relations with UVA Wise. I’d like to see that process overhaul…I’d also like to start institutionalizing Support and Access Services resources. For example, the free store, the textbook access office, those are things that in the long term, UVA should take over and administer, similar to the community food pantry and mental health services.”
“I’d also like to change some of the housing issues in Charlottesville. So, currently, the policy around housing is…that second years get priority. This deprioritizes upperclassmen and pushes them to off-Grounds housing; that doesn’t change the supply issue. So, one, we have an on-Grounds housing issue. Two, we have an off-Grounds housing issue. There’s a few landlords in the area that continually have students go to Student Legal Services, which is a part of Support and Access Services. What I’d like to do is to figure out what landlords [are causing] continual issues for students, and then have a way in which they are not invited to on- and off-Grounds housing fairs so that students avoid that from the onset.”
Mitchell: “We want to be movers and shakers. Like that, in my mind, is the whole point of running on a ticket with other people, with other great ideas. That’s the whole point of our second pillar: vision. We’re experienced, we know what we’re doing. We’re going to steer the ship in the right direction, but we’re not just doing damage control. We’re not stuck in our ways. We still have these really innovative and broad ideas. We both talked to students at UVA: we’ve polled them. We also brought in our personal experiences, and we feel like we’ve identified through our policies some of the most pressing and critical issues at UVA. And so that’s the vision part. I have these really exciting things that I want to do that I feel like you can only do in the presidential role.”
“I never want financial access to be a barrier to entry, especially for CIOs, because I think the work they do is so meaningful and it touches literally every single corner of the University. …I’m proposing a student activities fee raise of $4. This will actually go before the board in March. So, in a little less than a month now, and it’s a $4 raise of the fee, it’ll take it from $58 to $62. If they approve it, that is going to be another $110,000 in funding for clubs.”
“I think it is so important that we establish an endowment. It’s needed for two reasons. One, filling in the gap with student organizations, anything to get them more money is important. Two: the Support and Access Services branch that Lyca oversees does incredible, incredible work for FGLI students. They’ve got great programs, but it’s currently being funded entirely by a gift that was started with Jim Ryan. Currently, we are not financially stable. That’s also where the stability pillar comes from, like, the Student Council as an organization is not financially stable…I think the reason no one has done the endowment, even though every ticket runs on it, is because it’s a pain. No one actually wants to start it; it’s a lot of work, and unless you’re really into finance and money, you’re probably not going to see it through. But that’s the difference with me.”
Perez: “I think one thing that you’ve seen from the candidates in our ticket is that we have a willingness to push boundaries and to try new things. Stability doesn’t mean that we’re just going to sit there and take whatever is happening to us. It’s that we’re going to take that, and then figure out a way to make sure that student voices are best represented when we go into meetings with important people and administrators. I’m not really someone to mince words or to avoid being confrontational; I don’t think my running mates are either…it’s more about almost having a stable improvement in the UVA community.”
Lawrence: “What I want to do is create a new agency within the organization branch called Organization Events, that will help organizations promote their events and promote the things they’re doing around Grounds, just in a more centralized way, so Student Council can help them get more reach. For example, if your club is having some sort of event and you want to broadcast it out to a wider community, that’s something we can help you with. We can help you book out the space if you need help and get flyers out, get the word out on Instagram or whatever, just to make sure we’re building a stronger, more cohesive UVA community around these cool events.”
“I also want to start a transfer student-only activity fair. I think the activity fair can be a really overwhelming way to bring someone into the UVA community, and a more casual setting gets people and transfer students kind of involved in the UVA community without the overwhelmingness of the regular student activity fair.”
“With the other main initiatives, I want to start the process of discussing with clubs how ethical their interview practices are. I think right now, how a lot of clubs do multi-stage interviews, very much disproportionately affects first-generation, low-income, or rural students, who might not come to school with a polished resume, interview skills, or a nice set of clothes to wear to an interview within the first week of school. So, the first step of that is making sure clubs are attaching the resources available in their interview offers, telling everyone if you need a suit, go to the career closet. If you need help with your resume, go to the career center. I think a lot of clubs and organizations around Grounds are having similar problems, but they just don’t know that they can work together and solve these problems in a creative way.”
Tran: For me, what that looks like is increased transparency from student leaders, especially in terms of us communicating with different administrators, with the board telling students in a way that’s accessible through the website and through social media. What I really, really emphasize is polling: making sure that student opinions are collected before we make a large move, and if there is something that has to be done in a short period of time, really relying on our morals that federal oversight has no place at the University of Virginia. Things should be done internally based on our morals of student self-governance. And the last part of that is making sure we document and monitor how the Board of Visitors is acting.”
“Something that’s really core to my specific campaign is revitalizing the CIO consultants branch…it’s one of the four branches within the organizations branch, but it really doesn’t have a clear mission. What CIO consultants does currently is take questions from different clubs and help answer them. As VPO, I would make sure to refocus them specifically around CIO onboarding, helping new clubs navigate that process and really get connected into the CIO ecosystem, as well as having them be the ones responsible for coordinating with the marketing team, coordinating with the different branches to develop these marketing resources, and get that out there to clubs. They would work with the or recognition recognitions committee hand in hand to do after a club is established, they would connect with them, share the resources through an email, but also be the specific contact if they have any questions and continuously speak to them throughout the year to make sure that they’re getting on to a cross-CIO group me, to make sure they’re on that centralized CIO Canvas page that we would create with Student Engagement, as well as…have access to all of our newly created calendars on the website and on this Canvas page.”
Q4: The majority of both tickets are existing members of the Student Council. In what ways will your ticket differ from the current President Clay Dickerson’s tenure?
Andrews: “I think the way that we’d like to differentiate ourselves is that we are entering a new year knowing what happened this previous year, particularly with President Jim Ryan resigning and a lot of federal overreach into UVA…and I think that the difference now is that we’ve seen that occur and that we we cannot move forward without an advocate in the president’s seat. I honestly wish and hope with our campaign that that advocacy doesn’t stop. That’s why we’re running. We’re not running to be a radical change. We’re running because an advocate needs to be in the president’s position of Student Council, particularly given what we saw over the past year.”
Mitchell: “I think I’m going to take a lot of what I learn and observe from Clay. Like, he has done a fantastic job…I was his vice president for a year. We ran together. We had similar policies. I think I want to carry on what he started with the career closet…with all of the SAS work… I think as a commerce student and also as VPO, a lot of my work has been with funding.”
Frost: “ I think with us in charge, we also want to focus on bringing this ethos of service to the organization branch and the administrative branch.”
Perez: “I don’t really think, in terms of goals for the student body, that much will change. At the end of the day, it’s all about serving students and doing what is best for them. I think the way that you see that with some of our platforms is that they focused a lot on starting up a lot of these good initiatives like the Cavalier Career Closet which we 100% intend on growing and strengthening next year, but also expanding that to clubs and making club funding more accessible and making other things, other avenues for getting student voices heard accessible. When it comes to our website, making sure that it’s actually up to date…when it comes to our existing channels of communication, making sure that they’re fully utilized is really step one. In terms of accessibility and that kind of equity piece, I really don’t think that mission at its core changes. I really want to focus on engaging and collaborating with grassroots organizations and organizations that serve minority communities at UVA…I think all of those goals, like fundamentally, aren’t very different, but the plans and the concrete steps that we have planned to achieve those goals would differentiate us from Clay and the other ticket running.”
“One thing that I noticed was that students with disabilities really don’t have much representation in StudCo. So, what makes sense to me is to create this kind of ADA or disability advocacy agency. I want to reimagine what diversity engagement might look like beyond just ethnic or cultural representation.”
Lawrence: “I want to take a more measured and analytic approach to how we’re going to impact the most students in the best way possible, and I think that is something that’s hard to do, but I think my track record in Airbus…like cut costs exponentially, increase marketing by a lot…collecting a lot of data…is something that I feel comfortable doing and will continue to do. So I guess the key difference is that this past year, a lot of emphasis has been put on Support and Access Services, and I made a lot of changes within that, but we don’t want administration or any branch to be left behind, and we have innovative ideas for how to change them as well.”
Tran: “We would continue to listen to FGLI and minority student voices. That’s absolutely something that we would still prioritize and not something that we would differentiate from in terms of Clay’s campaign. I absolutely want to emphasize that. I think that something that is slightly different for our campaign is really this emphasis on financial stability for all students…what that looks like is having more financial security for Student Council through the endowment. Currently, they’re one of four committees in the organizations branch, and they independently audit, at random, CIOs to make sure they’re spending their money appropriately…but they also have access to all internal Student Council funding and finances. What I really want to do is have them work with the chief finance officer, with the finance committee within Student Council, to make sure that our internal Student Council committees are using their funding appropriately.”
“We differentiate in terms of financial stability…something that people have run on in the past is getting a public funding dashboard out there, but it’s something that I know, and I’m confident that I can do. There’s already a back-end financial dashboard that differentiates between CIO, between CIO category, between funding round, and all we need to do is get that on the Student Council website: get that facing students, and on a centralized CIO Canvas page.”
Q5: Previous student council campaigns have used similar campaign buzz words on supporting student voices and promise change on Grounds. What distinguishes your ticket from previous campaigns?
Andrews: “I think that a key difference for us, and Emily can definitely speak more about this because she is running for the VPA position, but that we’re running on a ticket that is saying look we know that people don’t know what happens in Student Council and don’t really care what happens in Student Council to be frank until it like really affects them and so we want to increase our transparency.”
Mitchell: “I think every single ticket has something that’s very stability adjacent. I think our approach to it is very pragmatic. Like again, we recognize the limitations of Student Council when we’re not actually consulting with students. One of my policies…is restarting our presidential advisory board. This used to exist. I have no idea why it doesn’t anymore…this is literally a group with the president of each school of enrollment and the Student Council president… I think having all these groups together will give us that perfect outlet to consult with those students. We can say, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about saying this or doing this. We want to know how engineering students feel, how McIntyre students feel, how law students feel.’ And then hopefully we can actually go out, collect surveys, data, you name it, and then we can really create these well-rounded, holistic arguments. As Student Council president, your job is to be the voice of every single student at UVA. That encompasses every single group, every single background, every single ideology. So why are we not trying to consult with students from every single one of those groups?”
Frost: “Live streaming general body meetings and actually telling people what the hell a ‘GenBod’ is, because there’s so much jargon within Student Council…as the Director of University Relations, I’ve already done quite a bit to increase engagement with Student Council. I’ve doubled the amount of unique visitors that we’ve gotten on our website this past year. I’ve increased our Instagram following by 33%, but I think we need to implement an ethos of transparency within Student Council. I think we need to find leadership that is as passionate about transparency as we are because there’s only so much that the marketing committee can do if the organization as a whole isn’t committed to the same ethos of engaging with the whole student body. And, in addition to that, one of my key priorities is live-streaming our general body meetings every week on YouTube. Also, archiving them on YouTube so students can go back and watch them.”
Perez: “What is really significant for our team is that we’ve picked polices that are very tangible and achievable in one term…it’s informed by what UVA students have experienced over this past year, specifically.”
Lawrence: “I think that we’re making an active effort right now during campaigning to meet students where they’re at. If you’ve been around Grounds, you’ve probably seen us with the table, blasting music, giving out flyers and lollipops, getting people to talk to us…we’ll be tabling all week, all weekend, all next week. I think that’s the cost of being a winning selection and getting students to actually care about these policies. And I think it’s it sounds crazy, and it sounds like hyperbole, but that’s something all three of us are really willing to do, and we really want to connect to as many students as possible and hear everyone out, because every student’s opinion matters and is just as important as we move forward.”
Tran: “There have been a lot of promises in the past that haven’t necessarily been fulfilled. I also think what differentiates just this period of time is the past year that UVA has had…and so, I think students are really looking at student leaders, at Student Council, to do something to, like you said, amplify their voices. So, what that means to me is, as VPO, having personal connections with student leaders, being out there, being a resource for them, being reliable so that they feel comfortable voicing their concerns and their worries to me. UVA should be governed by its mission, its students, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, not changing or shifting political agendas, and that’s something that I feel very firmly about and that I know our ticket feels firmly about as well. So, through these different transparency mechanisms, resources, these clarified and streamlined ways for students to get involved, their voices will be heard by us, and we will put words into action.”
Q6: How do you plan to navigate the relationship with the Board of Visitors, and how will things change internally for the Student Council?
Andrews: “Moving forward, it is incredibly important to not forget what happened over the past year. Even though we have immense change on the Board of Visitors with Spanberger appointing new people, that doesn’t mean that they were our biggest supporters or best friends last year, and we’re not going to forget that. I think that the Board has an opportunity to prove to students now that it is listening and that it will continue to listen, and that’s what we’ll do. I think that starts by creating conversations with the board…I think that moving forward, what we’re looking for is a genuine want to meet with us. In the past, that has not been the case.”
Mitchell: “I’m excited. I think this is an optimistic year. Maybe I’m the only one who feels that way. Like we had such a tumultuous term this past year. It was crazy. I don’t need to explain that. Like, we’ve all seen it and experienced it on the institutional level with the Board…and so I think now with a new president, a new governor, a new board, like let’s hit the ground running. I think we can absolutely form meaningful relationships, and I think a lot of the work we do flows through the Board of Visitors. So, I really do value a strong working relationship with them… I recognize the importance of the board. They’re the governing body at UVA. I want to make sure we’re working well with them, but that’s not to say that if something ever happens or if there is controversy, we won’t stick our necks out because again, we are the student voice.”
Frost: “We’re going to continue advocating for the Board of Visitors (“BOV”) based on what students say to us. We’re going to keep making student voices heard [by the BOV]…we do have a responsibility to the students to make their voices heard to the administration and the people in the positions of power. Also, a part of our campaign is advocating for a voting student member of the Board of Visitors.”
Perez: “I’ll give a broader idea for our ticket. I think in terms of my role as VPA, it’s more about pushing boundaries internally within Studco’s culture and undergraduates, less so with administrators. A boundary that we’ve been working really hard to push and plan on continuing next year is the [Student Activity Fee] raise, and then further pushing boundaries that exist with the BOV, because the BOV hasn’t really updated this in years.”
Lawrence: “I think it’s important to as I can go into a term having a work a good, positive working relationship with them and make sure we’re meeting each other in the middle…and always make sure [we have] open, positive, clear communication with each other so we don’t lose any information through bad communication.”
Tran: “Specifically speaking as VPO, transforming what’s possible is allowing clubs to have expanded opportunities and allowing the students that participate in clubs, which is the majority of the student body, to have those opportunities. That looks like supporting students across the board, whether it be transfers, low-income, all students, and to do that tangibly, as I mentioned, having more funding for clubs is going to be really key. One of my policies is creating an interactive map for the fall activities fair…I’ve talked to transfer representatives, and to first-year students who are so overwhelmed when it comes to the activities fair…and transfer students specifically feel like they’re running out of time if they don’t see the CIO that they want or they don’t learn about what’s out there. And so this is a really tangible way that we can make it easier for students and help them transform what’s possible for their time at UVA.”
Q7: The University had threats to public safety in the past, like the November 2022 shooting and, most recently, the Shannon Library swatting incident in November 2025. This prompted calls for different ways to protect the University community that clash with each other. How do you plan to reconcile different community calls on topics like safety without overlooking some communities?
Andrews: “After the last lockdown in Shannon Library, I was a big proponent of legislation to ensure that the classrooms actually locked. That was a really big issue that we saw when we sent out the survey, is that most students would get into areas that didn’t have locking doors…we of course care about safety and responding to students and their needs with that.”
Mitchell: “I’m from Charlottesville, so while I wasn’t a UVA student, I remember that shooting. Like it was felt all across the city, it was terrible. I saw the response [asking] for more police presence…with ICE now, it is a very sensitive topic…I see both sides of that. The [University, County, and City Police]…they’re here to help you. I’m not by any means telling you to go approach them out of the blue if you don’t feel comfortable doing so, but I really know that from Chief Longo, especially in the UPD, they want student input, they want to learn, they want to make sure students don’t feel unsafe. Like, that’s what they’re here for…and so I’m really excited to work alongside him as Student Council president because I think there’s a lot of good that could be done there.”
Frost: “One of the key pillars of our campaign is expanding access to mental health resources, which I think is an integral part of community safety. One of our key initiatives is expanding the Next Steps Fund, making sure students who use up all of their allotted CAPS sessions can continue working with community providers…and also lobbying Student Health to hire more counselors because right now they’re very under-staffed. There’s like, a three-week wait time to get in with the counselor, and you know, if it’s a time of crisis, people need to be getting in faster than that.”
Perez: “I’ll let you know about a StudCo resource: Safety Advisory Board. Students from a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different viewpoints literally sit down with representatives around the UVA community and make their voices heard. The biggest thing is utilizing the existing channels and making sure we have proper marketing when it comes to the recruitment timeline for advisory boards, so that students that do have strong opinions know there is a resource for them to get involved…our ticket is really prioritizing this under the VPA branch. There is a data science committee that I think is underutilized when it comes to polling student opinions…stability is to have an emergency response plan. To me, that looks like making sure TAs are being trained on emergency response.
Tran: “After the 2017 Unite the Right rally, the 2022 shooting, as well as the swatting incident last year, the Charlottesville community is deeply traumatized by events like this…[but] there is a distrust in police in Charlottesville, as well as specifically in the UVA community. So, the way that we’re approaching this is by increasing transparency and communication with police stakeholders and community groups, whether that be students, but also individuals within the Charlottesville community.”
What’s Next:
Andrews’s and Mitchell’s tickets both say they have the experience and zeal to serve the student body and reconcile the fallout of last year, when the resignation of President Jim Ryan and StudCo’s resulting vote of no confidence against the Board of Visitors propelled the University into a frantic search for a new president. This resulted in the controversial appointment of Scott Beardsley, who had previously been the Dean of the Darden School. This decision was criticized by groups like the American Association of University Professors and the newly elected Governor, Abigail Spanberger, who had called for a pause on the selection until new members of the Board were confirmed.
The new Student Council will need to navigate a new president and Board of Visitors while delivering on their promises to students. While the optimism was palpable among the candidates, the upcoming election is coming off the heels of historically low student voter turnout. Will the candidate’s messages bring students out this year? All students are eligible to vote for Student Council; other positions on the ballot include University Judiciary Committee and Honor Council Representatives. Students will receive an email with a link to the voting ballot on February 24th and have until February 26th to vote.
Leave a Reply