Always Serving and Preserving party candidates Domenic Martini and Jalen Griggs want to live up to their name.
"We would like to bring the barrier down between SGA and the students and make it a program where they can go and talk to the people in their offices and actually get some results on campus," Martini said. "I don't want people to feel like it's this big mysterious organization that just gives us coupons for the Tiger Den once in a while."
Martini, the presidential candidate, played a role in SGA this year as the secretary of Dining Services and Residence Life. He also serves as the president of his fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha and was a student orientation guide last summer.
A.S.A.P. consists of 20 members. Martini carefully chose the students he wanted in his campaign by seeing who stood out as being really involved on campus.
"I wanted a small group of dedicated people who actually wanted to do something for the school," he said.
Martini chose Griggs as his running partner after he saw how passionate he was about the programs he was involved in. The two met through Griggs' older brother, J.C.
Griggs was a part of the Freshman Senate his freshman year and served as a senator this year. He also will be an orientation guide this summer and will serve his second year as a Frosh Camp counselor. His heavy involvement led him to be passionate about other programs and organizations on campus.
"I would like to use the power of being vice president to provide and inclusive environment where we could team up with other programs and make smaller organizations feel bigger than what they really are," he said.
If elected, the two want to have the senators be more involved and write more bills. They also plan to set up a website called "We the Students" where students would be able to write a petition to SGA and have other students sign it. After their petition would obtain a certain amount of signatures, SGA would be obligated to respond.
"This way the students could actually petition the student government and we would be able to really see what issues the students want to discuss and what they would like to see from us," Martini said.
Other plans for this semester include getting rid of the stereotype that the University is a place where students only commute to school and immediately go home by increasing involvement from all students of different backgrounds. Higher quality parking and dining are also issues ASAP wants to improve.
"I think I am a good fit because I have a diverse background and have been a part of many organizations during my time at the University of Memphis," Martini said. "I've seen the process of bringing events to campus and think I am the right person for taking SGA and putting it on the same level as the students."
Election results will be released at 3 p.m. Friday. Online voting for the Student Government Association is open and voting ends at 11:59 p.m. March 27.
