Leong wins SGA president
Tim Leong was elected Student Government Association (SGA) President with Bethany Davis and Cody May as vice-presidents Friday by a grazing 25-vote margin.
“The vote was so close,” SGA Spiritual Life Director and Vice-Chairman of Rules and Judiciary Committee Thomas Turner said. “It showed that the student body truly cared about who was representing them.”
According to Turner, who was in charge of supervising the election, the online polls opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m. Students accessed the poll by logging into their Liberty account and clicking a link on the Splash page.
“Tim Leong is a great kid,” R.O.S.E. President Sean Maguire said. “He is extremely well-organized and has basically been (behind) the paperwork of the SGA this semester and last semester. I am really excited to see what he will do.”
“I think Tim will do an excellent job,” sophomore Craig Storrs said. “He is an excellent leader and he has proven himself over this past year with his position as executive secretary and as the Vice-President for Government Affairs. He has proven himself to be a great leader and a go-getter.”
Leong said that one of his primary goals as the president of the student body would be to get student input.
“Immediately when school starts I want to make sure that we have a large presence at the block party, the chancellor’s cookout, during move-in and essentially all the functions to show that the SGA is serious about representing the student body,” Leong said.
As part of his platform, Leong wants to push for a 30-minute curfew extension on weekends.
“We see it as a feasible goal,” Leong said.
Leong also said that it had been a pleasure working with Matt Mihelic, the outgoing president.
“I know that a lot of the improvement to SGA has been a result of his leadership,” Leong said.
The SGA held a banquet Friday at the Thomas Road Fellowship Hall to award sponsored clubs and honor Matt Mihelic.
“Mihelic did everything in a Christ-like attitude, even when things got hard and frustrating and people attacked him on the floor of the senate,” Maguire said. “He still stood up for what was right and he did it without lashing back.”
During the banquet, Mihelic gave a charge to the SGA to “keep Christ as the center of all things.” He said that the future success of the SGA will be determined by their commitment to Christ on an individual level and on a corporate level.
“Without that, we will lose focus,” Mihelic said. “We will become a very complicated organization which goes off on rabbit trails and get’s caught up in little things. We will have squabbles with ourselves that we can’t get past. But with Christ as center, I think we will be able to see what we are here to celebrate tonight (and) that is what God can do with a group of students who abandon themselves and say that they want Him to be the center of it all.”