Ward, Barefoot focus on student health, safety and success

Ward, Barefoot focus on student health, safety and success

Anderson Ward and Ava Barefoot, East Carolina University's newly elected Student Government Association president and vice president, are gearing up for a transformative term focusing on mental health, campus safety and student success.

Ward and Barefoot, both natives of Raleigh, were voted in by their fellow students during the 2023-2024 school year and will take office this fall. The two ECU College of Business seniors are using their learned skills and passion for Pirate Nation to work with campus groups to listen and implement new ideas.

"Working with these different departments is going to allow us to reach as many students as possible and hopefully help every one of them," said Barefoot.

A Family Affair

It was a no-brainer for the two to attend ECU once graduating high school, especially with a large number of Pirate alumni in their families. They both credit their family ties for the desire to attend ECU, with alumni in their family dating back to East Carolina Teachers College. Ward shared a frame filled with ECTC memorabilia dating to 1929 when his grandmother attended, showing how much ECU and the community mean to him and his family.

"Me and my grandma lived in the same dorm, we lived in Cotten. That was something cute and fun that we figured out. She was here when it was ECTC, so she's a teacher. I have many teachers in my family that all went here," said Barefoot.

Both officers are involved on campus in multiple roles. Ward has been a member of ECU's SGA since his sophomore year as a College of Business representative before serving as the director of marketing communications for former president Ryan Bonnett. During that time, he was also the president of Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity at ECU. The roles provided Ward confidence when stepping into his new role as SGA president.

Barefoot is also involved in Greek life on campus as a member of the Alpha Phi sorority and has been the president of the ECU Club Lacrosse team for the last two years, which helped push her to run after finding a passion for listening to and helping others on her team.

Making Connections

The two forged a friendship during their freshmen year at ECU when finding a mutual connection between their siblings. Their older brothers were both in the same fraternity at ECU. They knew each other briefly before, but when Ward mentioned to Barefoot about his desire to run for SGA president after seeing his brother in office, she jumped on board. Ward's brother, Chandler, was the SGA president at ECU during the 2021-2022 school year.

"My brother being in office was the main driving force behind me wanting to run," said Ward. "I saw the opportunities that he had in his position, not only with his professional goals but being able to work with various people in the faculty and staff at ECU."

Barefoot's passion for helping others and previous experience in student government during high school made her equally excited to run for office. Once they decided on running, they worked quickly to make the goal come to fruition by building their team.

"After we decided that we wanted to run together, we quietly started talking with people from different organizations around campus. We have people from the Honors College, Greek life, student-athletes, club sports athletes, SGA and different various organizations within ECU," said Ward. "We were able to create a really good team that we thought represented the majority of students and would give everybody a voice here at ECU. Our main goal was to make sure that we had everybody's perspective all in one."

Once their team was created, the pair used what they learned from speaking with the different groups to form their platform. They feel their three main focuses ­-student success, campus safety and mental health relate to them and every student and staff member on campus.

"I know from personal experience, and many of my friends, that they don't often feel like they are reaching their full potential in their personal life or their academics," said Barefoot. "We believe that ECU has the tools to help those students who want to improve. We would just like to showcase these tools better and make them more accessible."

Getting a Head Start

Even though it is summer, the new leaders have already begun working on their goals. They have started coordinating with the Residence Hall Association and ECU Campus Living to increase accessibility to the multiple mental health resources on campus. They plan to highlight the resources and inform incoming students of all that is available to them.

One part of their platform, campus safety, is already in the works, this one focusing on campus safety. The new team has collaborated with campus living and other departments this summer to create resource magnets to be placed in all freshmen residence halls. The magnets will include contact information for ECU Police, Academic Affairs, ECU Counseling Services and more.

"The goal is whenever they come onto campus, they can see it on their fridge, and they're most likely not going to really be able to move it, or they're not going to want to move it," said Ward. "We tried to do magnets just because it would be there as soon as they showed up."

Along with the resource magnets, Ward and Barefoot have been working with ECU Police Chief Jason Sugg and Associate Vice Chancellor of Campus Safety Bill Koch to help highlight campus protocols for emergency purposes. They're also working with different departments on one of their biggest topics, accessibility, to ensure resources are available and that students are aware of them.

The new leaders want students to know that they are always available for conversations and are excited to move forward.

"At the end of the day, we've got to fulfill our promises," said Ward. "We ran on a platform that we strongly believe represents every single student here at ECU. We want people to push us a little bit. We want different perspectives. We want things that will open the conversation. I think that having those tough conversations is something that people may not like in the grand scheme of things, but that's what really helps a lot of the students and that's what gets you to a point where you're able to advocate for every single person here."

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