Over the past two weeks, the Morgan Mickey Hunter SGA campaign has visited with 11 different student organizations across campus in an attempt to understand the needs of students.
One of the campaign’s main platform goals is to “promote campus unity,” and vice presidential candidate Michael “Mickey” Curtis believes that actively reaching out to campus organizations and their leaders is one big way to achieve that goal.
Curtis believes the SGA should focus on, “creating that time to say, ‘You’re special, you’re important, I want to hear what’s going on with you. Regardless of what else is happening let me hear what’s going on. Let’s be open, informal and have that conversation right there.’”
In keeping with this informal approach, the campaign used the candidates first names to further their goal of approachability and inclusivity.
Morgan Hartgrove, a junior in College Scholars and current SGA senate chair; Curtis, a junior in nursing and current SGA senator; and Hunter Jones, a junior in animal science, are running for SGA President, Vice President and student services director, respectively.
Both Hartgrove and Curtis have been involved in SGA since their freshman year, when the pair met as part of the Traditions Committee, but Jones is a self-described “SGA outsider.”
However, he has been anything but inactive during his time on campus, serving as current Interfraternity Council President and co-president of all campus events committee; a member of student alumni associates, Rocky Top Roundtable and Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity; and former National Chief of the Order of the Arrow, which Jones described as “the top youth representative for Boy Scouts nationwide.”
Outside of SGA, Hartgrove is also a member of the Chancellor’s Honors Program, College Scholars, the Baker Policy Challenge and the student health advisory board. Curtis also boasts an impressive amount of campus participation: director of staff for Orientation Transition, Ignite Team Leader, president of Brothers United for Excellence, member of Student Alumni Associates, the NAACP, the Multicultural Mentoring Program and Multicultural Student Life, College of Nursing Ambassador and member of the College of Nursing Honors Program.
Through their own extensive campus interactions, Hartgrove and Curtis knew Jones, with his proven track record, good leadership and good work ethic, made him the right person for the position.
“Of all the experiences I’ve had in leading other committees and things like that, I thought I could really make an impact with the student services committee and help bring some fresh ideas and a new perspective to those committees to help revitalize some of them and make them more student oriented,” Jones said.
But, before they approached Jones, Hartgrove and Curtis had to commit to running for their own positions, a process that Curtis described as “going back and forth.”
“It’s not the fact that we feel we aren’t prepared or that we’re not qualified,” Curtis said. “We want to make sure that we aren’t doing this for ourselves, that we are doing it for the greater good of the university.”
While he contemplated this decision, Curtis said that Hartgrove supported and encouraged him the entire time by showing him the characteristics he possessed that made him suited for the vice presidential position.
“She kind of instilled that fire. She relit it for me,” Curtis said. “After that I knew for sure that she was going to be a good president, and I was going to at least be an okay vice president.”
And, for Hartgrove and Curtis, being a good leader hinges on actively listening and serving all of your constituents. Hartgrove has seen this play out in her time in SGA, such as when students complained about library crowding during finals and in response SGA wrote a bill expanding the hours of HSS, Haslam Business Building and the student union.
“It’s just interesting to see the problems that other students bring to the table that they don’t really know the SGA can fix and then SGA’s response to those issues,” Hartgrove said.
If elected, Hartgrove, Curtis and Jones will lead a student body that is still getting to know a new chancellor and still uncertain of the state of diversity on campus, but Hartgrove doesn’t anticipate these circumstances changing the focus of their jobs.
“We would approach (diversity) as we would any issue, and that’s by talking to other students and reaching out to hear what they think,” Hartgrove said. “That’s what we’re elected to do; I’m not going to force my opinion on someone else and call it public service.”
The campaign’s has five main goals: to promote academic enrichment, to foster campus unity, to enhance campus resources, to improve campus and fort safety and to improve student conduct processes. Although these goals are broad, each candidate has specific causes they are passionate about.
For Hartgrove, academic enrichment is fundamental, and she would like to see UT expand its open access resources.
“If we get those free textbooks in there, then it’s environmentally friendly; it’s friendly on student’s pockets,” Hartgrove said. “Faculty members can benefit from it too.”
As a nursing major, Curtis said that enhancing campus resources, specifically making resources like TRECs and the student health center more accessible in the summer, is crucial. Currently, a student needs to be enrolled in at least eight hours to have access to these facilities.
“Imagine if a student who over the summer is only taking one course… comes up with an illness and wants to use the resources of the Health Center for a very low price, but they can’t use it,” Curtis said. “Now they have to go to the emergency room, and that price is going to shoot up exponentially. And it’s going to delay their care.”
In addition to student’s physical health, their physical safety is also a large concern for Curtis. He proposes the creation of a team called the “Fort Buddies,” who would act as “the land force of the T: Link.”
“Ideally how that would work is that a student would call, just like they would call the T: Link, the Fort Buddies hotline and ask if they can get a Fort Buddy from Morrill hall.” Curtis said. “The individual in a very well lit jacket will come to Morrill Hall with a walkie talkie and they will get that student and walk that student to their final destination.”
Jones said changing the campus alcohol policy is another factor in improving campus and fort safety. Although he said the campaign doesn’t have a concrete proposal for this change, he does not want to simply “flip the light switch” and become a wet campus.
“Instead of just advocating that ‘yes we want it,’ it’s ‘yes, we want it, and this is how we want it,’” Jones said.
However, all of the candidates agreed on the main priority of their campaign: campus unity. Reaching out to individuals around campus, holding more diverse forms of town halls and hosting joint events are a few of the ways they hope to achieve that goal.
“First and foremost, we want to be able to bring different constituents from all over campus together to let SGA be that rallying point that connects them all and creates a better understanding of what this community is doing, why they are doing it,” Jones said.
“Once people have an understanding of each other, we can really make some things happen.”
