Jonathon Bolin said he and his running mate have started a revolution in Associated Students Inc., and he needs to be re-elected to keep the momentum.
“Look around at ASI this year. This is a completely different ASI,” he said. “[ASI President John Haberstroh and I] have changed it from the orders coming from the top down to making it bottom-up. We go to the [Nugget Grill and Pub] and have students tell us what to do. Students know what’s going on, and we need to keep that going.”
Bolin, who won 43 percent of student votes, joins Deshe Gully as an ASI vice presidential candidate during the runoffs. Bolin said that his past year of experience makes him the best candidate for the job and that recent changes to ASI and the number of votes he won show that.
Switching ASI’s structure now, Bolin said, would lead to the student government operating in a way that he says leaves students unengaged with ASI.
“It’s only been a year,” he said. “It takes more than a year for a complete change to happen. If we have two years, we can change this into something that it’s meant to be.”
Bolin said that he believes his student-centered approach to ASI helped push a record number of students to vote in this year’s election.
“Students came out in huge numbers because for the first time in ASI, we focused on telling them what ASI is and what we can do for them,” he said. “That’s why we had the biggest voter turnout. The students are finally starting to realize that ASI matters.”
Bolin said strong campaigning efforts from his other candidates also contributed to the voter turnout but not always in positive ways.
“Campaigning wins elections, but other candidates’ tricks came off as ingenuine and tacky,” he said. “I think a lot of people got turned off because it was, ‘Look at my dog, look at my squirrels.’ Some people took the silliness too far.”
Running again wasn’t thought out in advance though, Bolin said. It wasn’t until January that he and Haberstroh decided to see re-election.
“This wasn’t a plan,” he said. “This is a thing that I just can’t leave it how it is right now because I don’t think it would be a good decision. I’ve seen so much progress and it’s amazing, and I want to see it keep going.”
Ideally, Bolin said he wants to see his running mate, who he said is his “perfect match,” be elected next year’s president. However, even if Haberstroh doesn’t win the runoff election, Bolin said he will serve with presidential candidate Sean Zent to the best of his ability.
What is pivotal to his success, he said, is his differing idea of the ASI vice president’s role on campus, one that he said supersedes the textbook duties of the position.
“I’m there to chair Senate the Senate meetings, but I’m really there to listen to the students,” he said. “Every time I talk to a student and get an idea from them, it’s always an idea that no one else has even come up with. Chairing the Senate can’t be the end of it.”
If given the chance to be ASI vice president for a second term, Bolin said he plans to continue and further develop his student-centered approach.
“I want to go bigger, better, stronger and do more of what we’ve been doing to get students involved,” he said. “It’s all continuing, but we need to build on it. It’s all about touching the normal students.”