Ben Strand / Winonan
Winona State University Student Senate President Josh Hanson’s term is nearing its end as finals week approaches. Amidst the disarray of preparing for tests and papers, he is also spending time reflecting on his year as president.
As a senator last year, he saw a club have a negative experience with senate. He said he wanted to try and change the culture of how senate works and promote more senate activism.
“In the past, they were more focused on money requests,” Hanson said. “I wanted to do more than that.”
He said he wanted more opportunity for senate to work with city government, and he got it by working with the city on increasing pedestrian safety.
The senate also worked more with the school, passing parent-student priority registration and Indigenous People’s Day.
Open forums throughout the year were also hosted to engage with students.
“I wanted to increase the transparency on campus,” Hanson said.
He also said he grew a lot from his experience as president.
“I’m big in public service and being an active citizen in a democracy,” Hanson said. “It was a good service opportunity.”
It has also helped him develop professional relationships and proved to be a good stepping-stone to continue his work in public service, he said.
Hanson has also reflected on the things he could have done better. He said he wishes he could have done more with the senate on social justice issues.
“One thing we didn’t get to this year was working on implementing an anti-racism training that senators would have to go through,” Hanson said.
He said the training is still a possibility and also talked about the importance of working with marginalized groups at the university, but he said he wishes he could have pushed that even more.
Hanson said he feels pretty good overall with what he and the senate were able to accomplish this year and feels confident his successor, Nicole Zimmerman, will continue the progress made so far.
“I’m proud of what (Student Senate) did this year and their work,” Hanson said.
