On Wednesday, March 1, Maine Campus Media interviewed Senator Kyle Ricker regarding his recent candidacy for student body vice president. Ricker stressed the importance of advocacy between students and administration within his campaign.
Ricker is a second-year student here at the University of Maine and is currently serving in his fourth consecutive term on the student senate.
“I’m running for GSS vice president because I believe that I am someone who can make a difference in student government and be able to advocate to administration for the students most effectively,” Ricker said. “I also believe that the position of vice president should be something that you completely dedicate yourself to. I want to dedicate myself to students, and be able to advocate and just be able to push initiatives. I believe I will be able to help all students on campus.”
Ricker is currently a part of the electoral project committee which primarily focuses its efforts on overseeing where the student activity fee goes and distributes it to clubs and organizations that request funding.
Ricker is very passionate about advocating for his fellow students and hopes to eventually make a career out of it.
“Something that I wish to do if I’m elected is to cut my own pay and then dedicate more hours of my time to the position, because I believe this should be a position of essentially pure service to the students,” Ricker said.
Ricker plans to work vigorously in order to help the student body, saying that he sees himself working up to 40 hours a week solely on student government issues.
“I am always trying to continue working on some sort of initiative that I wish to accomplish,” Ricker said. “I want every hour of my day to be productive, and I just think being able to constantly push towards these sorts of initiatives or something like it is a year-long goal of mine.”
Two additional large goals that Ricker has if elected as vice president are to extend the add/drop period an additional week and to continue the work that is currently being put in to create a university-wide syllabus bank.
Ricker also spoke about student government transparency issues, and he plans to dedicate time toward ensuring that students from all walks of university life understand what student government is.
If you have any questions regarding Senator Ricker’s campaign, or just any student government related questions, please contact Senator Ricker via email at kyle.ricker@maine.edu and keep up with his campaign on instagram @kylewolfgangricker..
