Q: How is the year going so far?
Henriquez Fajardo: Fiona and I have grown really strong as a pair. We have become very comfortable pushing back on [each others’] ideas so we can narrow things down, have a goal in mind, and know who to reach out to make that goal happen.
Mundy: We also have a very active and participatory Senate. People have never been as excited as they are to be in the Senate this year. Learning about offices on campuses and who to contact has been the foundational work we have been doing this fall. Building connections between [Student Government Association] SGA and other entities on campus has been one of my main goals this year and we have been doing a lot of work for that.
Q: What are some successes you’ve had so far?
Henriquez Fajardo: SGA went through a restructure, and Secretary of Student Affairs and Secretary of Academic Affairs are newer positions. This year, those two roles, held by Anna Grace [’26] and Fortress Okorie [’27] [respectively], have done really well strategizing. Fortress has a mid-semester feedback survey, and it’s gotten a lot of responses. We were all really excited about that because that means that students wanted to engage with SGA, and view mid-semester feedback as an issue that they want to tackle.
Mundy: We also had a full Senate before the first Senate meeting.
Q: What about the challenges?
Mundy: Waiting for proposals from senators has been hard. Also, a lot of energy gets spent at the beginning of the year, but we want to continue that same energy throughout the year as a whole. We have been implementing this through tabling sessions, Wednesdays from 5 to 6 p.m. We have exec members out in front of the student body and interacting with people instead of having us be locked away in our office. We have a question every week, and we get answers. For example, “What does administration mean to you?” That’s been super helpful for shaping our leadership.
Henriquez Fajardo: I wanted to adopt something similar with the “Breaking out of the Boardroom” activity that we did a few weeks ago. It helped get senators out to talk to people and ask questions about what issues students wanted solved. I was able to take three tangible issues from the feedback we got and delegate them to senators.
Q: What are you looking forward to for the rest of the semester?
Mundy: I am looking forward to Dinner with Six Strangers. The premise is that, in an era of technology and social media — and all of us have classes we’re doing online — a lot of communication has become kind of mediated through technology. That makes it harder to have in-person conversations. So, we wanted to help students break out of this constraint and give them the first step into talking to people they don’t know.
Henriquez Fajardo: We’ve been talking with Carleton and their [Carleton Student Association] CSA, their version of SGA. We’re partnering to get some food donation boxes on both campuses, so that staff and faculty can try to contribute to the community and offer a lot of great resources to the Community Action Center in Northfield.
Q: What is your favorite part about being president and vice president?
Mundy: Working with Karen. Also, meeting new people.
Henriquez Fajardo: Yeah, we bring a lot of energy, and we’re both really determined to keep that energy throughout the year.
