It was shortly over one year ago when Mathew Warsocki, former chief justice of the student court, announced Spencer Moir and Anuj Teotia had won the 2016 student body election over three other tickets to be the next student body president and vice president.

Now, the pair are set to leave office April 23 when Mason Wenzel and Katie Mastel are sworn in to succeed them.

Proud moments, regrets and redos

Moir said he is most proud of the conversations he’s had with students and the effects of talking with the student body president have had on them. Specifically, he said hearing multiple stories of students say “this person in this position, like, cares about me” really made him proud.

Teotia said what makes him most proud of his term is knowing he has made an impact on at least most students’ lives and done something for their campus.

“I think the number one thing I regret was not being here in the summer,” Moir said. He added he regretted not being able to connect as much with deans, faculty and administrators as well as beginning work on platform points as he was only at NDSU for a few weeks during the summer, not the entire duration.

Teotia said he regrets there only being one ticket running for student body president. He said he and Moir could have done a better job reaching out to students and telling them they can and should run for office. If he were to redo something, Teotia would attempt to accomplish his platform points over the summer.

“Just getting them done before even August started just because over summer we couldn’t do as many platform points as we thought we could,” Teotia said.

Teotia added getting platform points accomplished sooner would have freed up fall semester more to handle emails and meetings more, helping them be way less stressed and busy than they were.

“I wish I would have been more prepared for like the daily duties of the office, like, just emailing, checking in with execs and senators, all the daily administrative duties,” Moir said. He added the duties took him by surprise and it took a while to break into the position of student body president.

Platform points

Part of Moir and Teotia’s platform points were to increase the awareness of student fees and where fee allocations from the student activity fee are going. Moir said having over 1,000 responses for their survey pertaining to increasing student fees, though the number is still “1,000 out of almost 15,000.”

“I think that’s an awesome step moving forward, though definitely not ideal,” Moir said.

Moir said he is fully confident Wenzel, as next year’s head of the Student Fee Advisory Board, will continue the progress he has made in reforming SFAB bylaws and getting more students involved. Teotia said it was an improvement to have senators talk to their constituents about where fees are going for Tier I organizations and student fees, though about a third did not. He said his thought for next year would be to have all student senators talk to their constituents.

Tuesday Twos and Follow Up Fridays, an initiative implemented by the Moir/Teotia administration, has been received with “amazing” feedback, Teotia said. “I think it was a great idea and we saw how it worked,” Moir said.

Moir and Teotia ran with intent to have another building on campus, in addition to the current Quentin Burdick Building, but discovered that was a platform point with little student interest. Moir said a Tuesday Two question was sent in early fall to gauge student interest in another 24/7 building but found students did not have enough interest in such building to warrant proceeding with the idea.

Expanding weekend dining center hours, another part of the duo’s platform, will be going into effect come fall semester and the completion of the Residence Dining Center expansion, Teotia said.

Impact, future advice

While campaigning, Teotia and Moir shared thoughts about their experiences when first coming to North Dakota State in that they felt as if they didn’t matter.

Now, Moir said their interactions from the beginning with multicultural students, first generation students and non-traditional students have “helped a lot.”

“Don’t be scared to reach out. One thing that I’ve learned very fast in my term was don’t be afraid to reach out to faculty and staff,” Teotia said.

“No one expects you to know everything or know how to do everything,” Moir said, adding that if students were to reach out to older, wiser people they would be a lot more successful.