[media-credit id=2200 align=”alignright” width=”500″][/media-credit]The new freshman class president of the Student Government Association (SGA) Alec Williams is ready for the Class of 2022 to start leaving its mark on Quinnipiac.

Williams is an advocate for improving student life at Quinnipiac. He has a background of student government experience from high school, but it was different than most. Instead of just planning prom and other social activities, they made a difference.

“At my high school, I actually wanted to change my school so we started a whole bunch of initiatives with mental health,” Williams said. “We actually created a block of time in our school everyday where you can go talk to groups about mental health and the students really had these in depth, “passionate discussions.”

Williams is enthusiastic about creating new opportunities for his cabinet and the rest of the freshman class.

“The main job as president is to make sure that I am facilitating these opportunities for the rest of my cabinet,” Williams said. “So whenever they want to work on something they are passionate about, they have an easier time doing it.”

This year, as Quinnipiac’s freshman class president, Williams won’t be doing anything less.

First hand, he knows adjusting to a new place is hard for many freshmen with homesickness and social anxiety. He wants to help everyone and be the role model people can go to.

“I see myself as an approachable person that people can come up to and chat with,” Williams said.

Williams doesn’t see being president as an individual role but instead an opportunity to get the cabinet to work together to improve student life.

“I personally see leadership as more of a facilitating role where you are pulling out ideas from people and getting the best out of them,” Williams said. “The way that I see myself as a leader is doing just that: being able to help someone through whatever they are going through, and if I don’t know the answer then we are going to push each other back and forth and get the best solution out of each other.”

He went on to describe potential plans the year, including “game day pizza.” Taking place on weekends in the Cafe or Bobcat Den, students would be able to call in huge sheet pizzas rather than having to outsource and call Domino’s. Other than Williams’ concerns with feeding students, he and his cabinet also have plans for a student internship abroad for political science majors and ideas for residential hall interaction so students can get to know each other better. 

Being class president is time consuming and an enormous responsibility, Williams said.

“I didn’t realize how much time it was going to consume, but it’s awesome. The energy in our room is amazing because we can see how passionate everyone is for a better school climate,” Williams said. “It’s been tough adjusting to all of this responsibility, I’m not going to lie to you, but we have this saying on SGA where the orders of our priorities are: school, work and then SGA.”

Balancing all of this and having a social life is difficult, but Williams makes sure he has time for it all.

“I always try to get my work done as soon as class is over because after that it’s always SGA: it’s making agendas, contacting people in my cabinet, going and emailing other administration to see what we can do in initiatives,” Williams said. “It’s wild.”

Williams wants people to approach him and reach out to all of the members of SGA. SGA is big on sending out a lot of surveys he said.

“Trying to keep students involved is one of my main things as long as everyone on SGA is approachable, is out in the community always doing stuff,” Williams said. “I feel like that’s the best opportunity to see where other perspectives are coming in and then those other perspectives can talk to you.”

Williams believes that the Class of 2022 will make an impact on Quinnipiac, and he is excited and full of energy to help them do so.

“It’s not so much remembering the name of Class of 2022, but I want it to be so when we come back to campus, after our time is done and we see all of these little improvements we can say, ‘yeah, that was us,’” Williams said. “I want us to be able to leave a legacy, leave our mark on the school and just be proud of what we did.”