Forrest Chamberlain
candidate for Freshman Student Senator

As the freshman senator, I would tackle many of the problems that I see facing us as a whole. For example, The Honors and Traditional Students are very compartmentalized from one another. I would try to find ways to bring the different residence halls together, and try to form a stronger sense of community within the freshman class. For our environment, I would push forward efforts to change the Styrofoam boxes, cups, and plates, to more eco-friendly and recyclable paper. Freshman clubs are also a large issue, seeing as seniority among clubs causes many freshman ones to be pushed aside, especially when it comes to funding and space. But there are also issues I would try to alleviate that face us all. For example, the health center being on the exact other side of campus from all of the residence halls, or the stagnant food court in LRH that seems functioning, but is never used, to even the consistent blocking of a skateboarding club, regardless of the large amount of support for one among the students on campus. As freshman senator, I would love to become more involved in such efforts as the glass recycling problems that UIS and the Springfield community in general faces, or even just finding more social activities that we could bring to campus in order to get more students involved more often, and help build a stronger sense of community among UIS students. For example, we could have a designated day for activities similar to the first week orientation ones. It’s always been a dream of mine to help on a large scale, and I feel that with this Freshman Senator position, I can do just that.