Corsair Holds Spring 2023 A.S. Candidate

agreed with each other’s responses on the need for greater awareness in A.S.

we serve — as a whole board, serve in students' best interest,” said Liu.

On Tuesday, April 4, candi dates for the Santa Monica College (SMC) Associated Students (A.S.) were invited to an online Candidate Forum on Zoom hosted by The Corsair.

The forum was moderated by Cor sair Editor-in-Chief Sasha Funes and Managing Editor Conor Heeley. Can didates were given two minutes to an swer each question, and touched upon issues concerning student outreach, accessibility of student resources and the on-campus publicity of A.S.

The A.S. is the student-run government of SMC with the goal of representing the interests of the student body. There are currently 14 students running for 10 A.S. leadership positions. Four of these positions are contested, which include the A.S. Pres ident, Director of Basic Needs, Director of Instructional Support, and Director of Publicity.

The remaining six positions — Sec retary, Director of Student Outreach, Director of Equity and Diversity, Direc tor of Student Affairs, Director of Sus tainability, and Student Trustee — fea ture only one candidate.

Every candidate was emailed an in vitation link for the forum, but only a handful attended. According to Funes, candidates were emailed in advance regarding the candidate forum multi ple times. Four out of the 14 candidates appeared: Cecilia Jeong and Justin Liu for A.S. President, Doris Huang for Director of Student Outreach, and Lina Fuellemann for Director of Publicity.

Candidates remained civil and needs to be more accessible, because many students have trouble efficiently navigating the site. He also suggested educating student clubs more on the funding process.

“This is something that we definitely would have to improve to ensure that make sure we try our best to deliver our message,” said Huang.

Huang brought up the idea of surveys and responding to online questions on social media, and Jeong suggested merchandise incentives such as hoodies to catch students’ attention. Liu said he would collaborate with the Director of Activities to organize events on satellite campuses during the Activity Hour, which is Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Fuellemann suggested that SMC professors notify their students of A.S. and its benefits. She added that if professors brought up A.S. in the beginning of a semester, it would be very

“People can hear about the A.S., but most of the people don't even know what it is,” said Fuellemann. “If a professor would talk about it, I feel like people will really take it serious and be like, ‘oh, OK, this is like a good thing to do

The election opened voting on Monday, April 3 at midnight, and the virtual polls will close on Thursday, April 6 at 11:59 p.m. The results will be announced in the A.S. Election Committee meeting on Friday, April 7 at 1:30 p.m. Students can log in to their Corsair Connect account and click on the animated banner at the top of the page to begin voting. The full recording of the forum can be watched on The Corsair’s YouTube channel, TheCorsairOnline.