Student Senate voted 16-0 in favor of electing Seth Yeakel, a senior math and computer science major, to be the speaker of the senate during its Wednesday meeting. There were no other candidates for the position.

Yeakel said he feels that he is ready to start this new chapter in the senate.

“It felt great. I’ve connected with every single senator that’s in there. I know that this time I’m ready for the position, and I think a lot of people know that I’m ready,” Yeakel said.

Now that Yeakel is speaker, he has goals to start planning a table series to get students’ feedback and to increase awareness of the senate.

He said his plans for the semester include trying to improve the efficiency of the senate to increase its popularity by using social media to reach out to more students.

“The students don’t know much about us, so if I explain what we are and who we are when we meet and what we do, then basically they can start coming over to us and asking questions and knowing what we actually do,” Yeakel said.

Kathleen Conlin, Student Senate’s Executive Vice President, is focused on the upcoming student body election.

She said she is looking to get as many students as she can to become election judges because in the past, they have had students step back.

“We have four in total, so I’m trying to get a nice number, probably seven — somewhere around there,” Conlin said.

The way she went about getting election judges in the past was by reaching out to people from the student government, but this time around she is looking to get other students involved, which she will be using social media promotion to do.

The way she went about getting election judges in the past was by reaching out to people from the student government, but this time around she is looking to get other students involved, which she will be using social media promotion to do.

“If anyone is more than willing to do it, I’m more than willing to sit down and get to know them better to see if they’re responsible enough to fill in as an election judge,” Conlin said.

She said she is figuring out a way to get more students involved to vote by doing a registration drive once a month and setting up tables around campus to get students to register.

“My goal was 50, and I hit 45, and it’s actually surprising to see how many students actually aren’t registering,” Conlin said.

She said she is also planning to get student leaders to make a video to talk about the fact that students on campus are not registering, how student voices matter and that it is important for them to vote.

The senate meets weekly in the Arcola/Tuscola room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union on Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

More information about the Senate can be found on the website or by contacting Student Body President Carson Gordon at ckgordon@eiu.edu.

Jelan Buchanan can be reached at 581-2812 or at jjbuchanan@eiu.edu.