Abrianna Reaves, the only candidate for student body vice president, wants to approach the role from an outside perspective as a candidate that is relatively new to Student Government.
Reaves is in her first year in Student Government and currently serving as the first ever professional fraternity chair on the greek relations committee.
Reaves and her running mate on the Thompson Reaves ticket, presidential candidate Emmie Thompson, are both involved across campus through organizations outside of Student Government though. Reaves sees this as a crucial aspect of running for a campus leadership position.
“A big thing that I want to try and do during my time would be to bring other kinds of people into Student Government, people that are involved in other things on campus because really representing the whole student body — you can't do that with just people that are involved in the same organization,” Reaves said.
Beyond Student Government, Reaves is a member of Alpha Gamma Delta, business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi and Gamecock Consulting Club.
From that work, she has focused a lot on communications and social media, which she expects to help with the actively communicative role of student body vice president.
One of her goals as vice president is to focus on bringing sociable culture back to Student Government and giving it more of an approachable atmosphere.
“Making it more relationship-based and I think the way to do this is host more, per se, social events that people in Student Government can gather and really get to know each other,” Reaves said. “I think it's really important that there is a well-rounded, relationship-based aspect of Student Government.”
Other goals for her term would be allocating Student Government funds with a “student-first” mindset, which Reaves said is a more achievable campaign objective than ideas she's seen previous years.
“We've seen people run on far out reach platforms before, and we want to see tangible solutions in place," Reaves said. "The way we want to do that is with the Student Government budget that's over $55,000. That's very real.”
The Thompson Reaves campaign platform seeks to address campus parking issues with a parking guide, improve gameday safety with Uber discounts, implement phone charging stations at Williams-Brice Stadium and revitalize Carolina Core.
Reaves personally wants to address Carolina Core classes by promoting courses she sees as useful for all students, such as classes she's taken that helped her with professional skills, resume building and LinkedIn, rather than taking classes that don’t connect with their interests or goals.
“I think that implementing these courses makes students even more well-rounded," Reaves said. "They will be taking courses that are relevant to their life, and that will help them be well-rounded as a person.”
Despite being the only vice presidential candidate on the ballot, Reaves said she is campaigning to win over voters and support Thompson rather than get complacent.
“I’m not looking at it as if I'm the only person there. Our team is campaigning as if we're each running against five other people ... because we want to prove to people that we deserve this position and that we shouldn’t just be placed into it,” Reaves said.