Hannah Brown ’19 holds the positions of executive senator and senator for the class of 2019 this year. Brown is continuing her involvement in the Student Union after serving as senator for North Quad last year.

Brown wants students to understand that voting for your senators is important. “I think that a lot of people underestimate how important the Union is, and I think part of that is our fault because we don’t really advertise what we do, but Union representatives are the people that are the liaisons to the administration,” she said. “We lobby for change and … the people you choose are the people who are going to do that for you, so it’s very important.”

Members of the Student Union must serve on two committees. Last year, she served on the Services and Outreach Committee, which organizes different events, and Cow-G, (Campus Operations Working Group), which works with facilities and all Quad representatives are required to be on. “You’re supposed to do two, but I did another,” Brown noted. She also served on the Dining Committee for the spring 2016 semester.

This year, Brown is serving on the Dining Committee, as well as chairing Services and Outreach. As executive senator, she is supposed to provide help for all the other communities as well.

Because Union members must participate in committees, Brown said it is important to strike a balance between representing the general student body and the specific constituency any one Union member represents. “The reason the Senate exists is to be those links to those different people, so what you’re supposed to do is … talk to people all the time in your quad,” she said.

Brown learned from her North Quad senate experience last year and returned this year ready to improve and make campaign promises she could actually follow through on. “I came in as a [first-year] who didn’t really know what the Union was about, so I kind of campaigned for things that were more for the Quad Council,” she said. “So I did end up making some general changes but they were more on the larger university-scale level, which is more what the Union should be for. More small, quad-centric things are for your Hall Council and larger are for your senators.”

So what is the Student Union actually able to do? “When it comes to administration … it’s like a working relationship. We have conversations, we have meetings. We say, ‘We see this. This is a problem,’ and we provide solutions that we think would be a good idea,” she explained. “So then the university takes that into account, and they get back to us if that’s feasible or not. So it’s just kind of like a conversation.”

Although the administration is not always incredibly responsive, Brown is looking forward to making productive change this year. “It’s really rewarding once it does finally happen and you get to see how happy everybody is when things improve.”