Meet the State Chair Candidates
The State Chair election will take place this Sunday, April 19. Due to the current pandemic, the Board of Directors have decided to conduct the election in a closed meeting using the video communications application called Zoom. We will stream the results live on Facebook. Following the election, a recording of the election will be made available for students at the earliest convenience.
Dominik Drabent
Advocacy work is an essential part of society. I am deeply convinced about that and this is what drives me when thinking about myself and my involvement in society. As a person who loves the social interaction with others, I value the open dialogue and try to be approachable for everyone with having an open mindset in place. This has been and is a great advantage when doing service to the students of the Minnesota State universities. Listening to the stories told by others is a crucial aspect when successfully advocating for students. I love supporting others and using the privilege I hold to empower and uplift the students who do not. The position of State Chair entails a lot of privilege, which can be used for the advantage of other students. Thus, being the State Chair would put me in a position, where I can utilize my established networks of support more effectively and found additional connections that allow me to reach more students and target their issues more precisely by having the Board of Directors guide me towards the common goal of students’ success. In other words: I want to become the State Chair to do a better service to the students of the Minnesota State universities.
Throughout my current involvement with Students United, I have been able to observe areas that work very well like the successful planning of conferences for students and areas that need some improvements. I have experienced the flaws of the campus staff program firsthand by being one of the Equity & Inclusion Specialists and therefore one of my main goals is the complete evaluation of this program during the next year to ensure a lucrative re-structure of it and for the organization. In addition to that, the planned long-term orientation of objectives and the increase in advocacy work by the Board of Directors is an important step towards stronger advocacy for students and their needs. Thus, another focus of mine is the assurance of the implementation of these necessary steps and the fast start of working towards these objectives in order to not lose any time for the advocacy of our students and not to do a disservice to them. In my opinion, this is significant in times where external factors, like a pandemic virus outbreak, slow down efforts to advocate for students and to create change when needed now and not in a few decades from now. My third point of focus will be the outreach and involvement of students with Students United. I understand that there are many committees and workgroups within the Minnesota State system, for instance, the Equity & Inclusion Council I am sitting on for Students United, and many of the seats available for students from Students United are not filled. As a student-led organization, this must change. The danger of being too distant from current students is an ongoing battle we face. Therefore, if we do not even hear the stories of students in these committees because we do not recruit enough students, then we do a disservice to our student bodies and run at risk to even more distance ourselves from the students on our campuses. As the State Chair, I want to prevent this from happening by the ongoing encouragement of outreach of Students United towards students.
Lastly, I want to state that I strongly believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion. I know that there still is a long way to go before we are even near having reached equitable and inclusive access for our diverse students and that we recognize their different needs associated with them. Only if we do so, we can assure the success of everyone; and the success of everyone should be our main goal. With this vision in mind, I am running for the State Chair position in 2020-2021 and the service to our students at the Minnesota State universities.
Jonathan McNicholes
It is with great enthusiasm that I announce my intention to seek the position of State Chair of Students United. I have been involved with Students United for the last two years serving as the campus coordinator on Bemidji State University. During this time, I’ve grown to become deeply connected to the organization, as well as its goals and hope to continue to be involved in the organization next year and share the experience and knowledge I have gained over the last few years.
In my time within Students United I am proud to say that I have been deeply involved in student advocacy by serving upon the Minnesota state policy council where I got to fight for fairer policies for our students. This includes my experience testifying in front of the Board of Trustees to share the stories that I have lived and encourage them to continue to keep the perspectives of the students they serve in mind.
If elected Students United Chair I hope to encourage the board to work hard to fulfill our appointments to the council and committees, we are expected to fill as currently we only have three out of countless seats filled. I think this is vitally important as the current board has shown this to be a priority of the organization in their new plans of switching to a more advocacy focused direction over the next few the next years.
Besides my experience at the system-wide level, I also have a great deal of experience within my role as coordinator in my fight to continually improve our internal structure over the last few years as it has always had a lot of room for improvement. As the upcoming Board of Directors works to re-define how we want our organization to look on the campus level, I think it is important that we have someone who has seen the struggles that campus staff system had. As well as someone who has already worked countless hours trying to work with our assistant director of advocacy to improve be involved. I plan to do this by providing feedback and guidance of my experiences during the creation of this new system, in order to make sure we create the most successful system we can.
While not on the Board of Directors of students united, I do have multiple years of 501c3 Nonprofit board director and chair work having served multiple years on the Board of the Nameless coalition for the homeless of which I am currently the Vice Chair, as well as on the executive board of a county level major political party unit. In this time, I have gained a high level of experience working with Grants and grant writing, Charing board and subcommittees meetings, Board leadership, Using Roberts Rules, Hiring and overseeing staff, Working as a chair with executive directors, and Running a large budgeted nonprofit organization.
I have been closely following the works of the board over the last two years and excited for the direction our organization is heading, I hope that if elected as State Chair I can contribute my skills of helping to guide the board of directors into another successful year advocating on behalf of all current, future and past Minnesota state students.
Kridish Uprety
Greetings, my name is Kridish Uprety. I currently attend St. Cloud State University, majoring in Mechanical Engineering in my senior year. I currently serve as the Board of Director of St. Cloud in Students United. I am announcing my candidacy to run for the State Chair of Students United.
In the last 4 years of my exposure to Students United, I have learnt a great deal about the organization both as attendee as well as a Board of Director. It has helped me channel my passion towards advocating for students around the MinnState system. I have been able to work closely around advocating for problems that are faced in majority of our campuses, such as Food and Housing Insecurity, International Student Healthcare, Textbook Affordability along with advocating for providing MinnState with affordability. These are all ongoing conversations that have impacted students across the system, but we also need to work at identifying solutions. I have always used the problem-solving skills that I have polished as an engineering student to approach any problems and be able to quickly identify ways to solve problems.
Working with students and around higher education has been my passion since I have been part of advocacy in student governments along with Students United. I got the opportunity to testify in front of the Board of Trustees and share my experience to best serve in the interest of students around the MinnState system. Having worked as student body president and working around hard conversation topics that impact students and faculty, this has helped me become a great learner of diplomacy and proceed with conversations with caution and diplomacy. I have learnt to understand the difference of opinion to have healthy discussions and conversations. This has helped me have an open mind to everyone and be respectful of the differences. This has also helped me become a team player and assisted me with the growth of myself as a student leader. With different leadership roles and contributions, I was nominated by the President of St. Cloud State for a national recognition through Campus Compact to be a Newman Civic Fellow of which I was able to get it. This fellowship will help me polish my skills as a person along with leadership and reflective upon my personality.
I find myself as a great team player and leader under whichever role I play. But the true testimony is the fact that I have a passion that I get through my role models, one of which being my own grandfather who has significantly helped in the educational improvement back in my country. Looking at his works and knowing the contributions of his to the society, I think my best of giving back to the institutional society is to help advocate for students through the position of State Chair for Students United, should I be elected.