Ian McDonald and Sydney Devitt form the only official slate running for president and vice president in the Oshkosh Student Association elections.

McDonald currently serves as the vice president of the Oshkosh student body and Devitt is the OSA speaker pro-tempore.

The two have collaborated throughout the year on bringing services to the campus, such as UWO Go and The Cabinet food pantry, which recently opened in Reeve Memorial Union.

McDonald said that the focus of the past year, alongside OSA president Jacob Banfield, had been transportation and food insecurity.

Alongside continuing UWO Go and securing donations for The Cabinet next fall, McDonald and Devitt hope to focus on mental health and sustainability initiatives on campus.

“Making sure that we have large-scale events to educate students on such things like mental health and what they can do for themselves and their peers and their friends,” Devitt said.

McDonald and Devitt said they hope to collaborate with other groups on campus that have done work in sustainability and increase the scale of those projects so they have the widest impact on the student body.

This year, McDonald and Banfield have advocated for the creation of new OSA senate positions in an attempt to create more direct and diverse representation in groups and student government.

Previously, all senators had been considered at large, but on March 2, the OSA assembly approved a referendum that will be on the spring general election ballot to add 10 advocacy senators and five academic senators who will be required to identify and propose solutions to issues on campus.

“It was kind of like, ‘Yeah, we’re a senate body, but nobody really has a specific function for groups on campus,’” McDonald said. “Now these advocacy and academic senators can speak to these marginalized groups on campus and be the connection between them and their student government.”

At the time of writing, OSA had received eight applications for senate positions compared to only two last year.

McDonald and Devitt have known each other since freshman year and have worked alongside each other in student government through OSA, something they said makes them trust one another.

“Looking forward to next year, we felt we were the best equipped with knowing the policies we’ve put in place, and for continuing to grow OSA,” McDonald said. “We felt excited to pick that up for another academic season.”

McDonald and Devitt said that they really care about what the student body wants and needs. They’re not tourists; they’re committed to the programs they’ve started this year.

“Based off the different things we’re involved with and our different experiences, and we think we have good outreach to different groups on campus,” Devitt said.

The OSA election will take place March 10 and 11. Students can vote through Titan Connection.