Mimi Mudd elected as WCGA president

Junior Mimi Mudd was elected Tuesday as president of the Westhampton College Government Association for the 2013-2014 term.

After the day of voting, Mudd won the election, barely beating out the opposing candidate, Meredith Combs. The two had said that they agreed to work together in the future, regardless of which of them had won.

Mudd assumes the position of WCGA president after participating in WCGA during all three of her years at Richmond. After serving as a member of her class cabinet during her freshman year, Mudd was elected as class president for the past two years.

Mudd said that she has learned a lot as class president and is looking forward to using those experiences and developing them for her next step as WCGA president.

"I found a true passion in student government when I came to this campus," she said. "As a leadership major, WCGA gave me an outlet to use some of the concepts that I had learned in my Jepson classes."

"With so many student organizations on campus, the student voice can sometimes be disjointed," Love said. "We are hoping that through the cooperation of WCGA and RCSGA, we can create a common, unified student front to the administration."

By increasing the frequency of WCGA-RCSGA joint meetings from once per semester to monthly meetings, Love hopes that the two governments will be able to work more closely together, he said. He also expressed interest in creating a stronger partnership between senate committees from each college that dealt with similar issues.

One difference between the RCSGA and WCGA elections was the absence of a presidential debate between the two WCGA candidates. While Mudd said she was impartial about the idea of having a debate, Combs felt it would have helped show differences between the candidates.

"By not having a debate, there was no real way for the candidates to explain their platforms," Combs said. "We made flyers and posted on the WCGA Facebook page, but I wonder how many people actually saw that."

In other WCGA elections that took place on Tuesday, Sara Krauss was elected as the new WCGA Chair of Senate, rising-senior Caraline Mikkelsen, rising-junior Nathalie Ivers, and rising-sophomore Lauren Pepe were elected as their respective class presidents.

Contact reporter James Riddick at jr.riddick@richmond.edu