This past spring, the students of Saint Anselm College elected seniors Maura Crump and Ben Mickens as our Student Body President and Vice President. 

These are the highest positions in the Student Government Association and carry important responsibility; however, some Anselmians may be unsure of what their leadership entails.

President of the Student Body, Maura Crump, is a senior Elementary Education major who started out in SGA as class treasurer her freshman year. As a sophomore, she served as Deputy Secretary of Finance, followed by Secretary of Finance as a junior. 

As SGA president, Crump serves as chief executive officer, the Chairperson of the Executive Board, and sits on the Advisory Council to the President of the College. “Within SGA, I facilitate conversations between students and representatives, relay information between the student body and administration, and pursue ideas and events to benefit the lives of each individual student,” she explained.

Beyond the job description, Crump aims to serve all students including those outside of SGA. “My absolute favorite part of the job is meeting those who both attend and work for our school and building relationships with them. I also love getting to help others make an impact on our community,” she said.

Vice President Ben Mickens is a senior Politics major with minors in Philosophy and Political Theory. He was interested in SGA before he even arrived on campus as a freshman. Since then, he’s held a different position all four years, starting out as a freshman senator, then becoming Chair of the Room and Board Committee as a sophomore, and finally as a junior taking the position of Secretary of Internal Procedures, who runs all of the elections for SGA.

This year as Vice President, Mickens acts as the President of the Student Senate and is a member of the Executive Board. In regard to the student senate, “I run our weekly meetings, give committee assignments, and work with Senators/VP’s on legislation,” said Mickens.

“My favorite part of the role is the relationships you build with the other members of SGA in helping them get the things done that they want to get done. It’s really rewarding, especially to see growth over time,” he continued.

Despite his dedicated history in being part of the SGA, Mickens said that when he had initially thought about running for Student Body Vice President, he ruled it out until his friends encouraged him to run. He told them, “there’s only a handful of people I’d think about running with,” and Maura was one of them. 

In fact, Crump said she wouldn’t have wanted to run with anyone else, and they stressed that working together as a team is a huge part of how they want to run SGA. 

One thing President Crump and Vice President Mickens hope to accomplish this year is reintroducing the element of service leadership into the SGA.

Ben explained that a decline of service leadership was “a sort of natural path that it took, and a reasonable one, during COVID.” 

He continued, “SGA, along with pretty much everything else on campus, became very isolated. Which was understandable, because things were literally isolated.” 

Now that those restrictions are no longer a factor, Maura and Ben want to re-emphasize the principle that SGA exists in order to “solve problems for the student body, be advocates for the student body, and to lift up the student body.” 

Maura further elaborated that given the college’s Benedictine values and the emphasis on service that comes with that, “it’s natural that SGA should also have that value of service.” 

To accomplish this goal, Maura and Ben are launching the Benedictine Way Campaign, which aims to fulfill the principle of “respect for self, place, and others” on campus. The Mental Health Committee and Respect the Nest Committee–both part of SGA–cover the elements of respect for self and place, but the new campaign will introduce a third committee oriented towards respecting others. It will also aim to get SGA more involved in the Saint Anselm community so students know that their Student Government “is active and can be a resource to them.” 

While they have big plans for the whole year, the President and Vice President have already accomplished quite a lot in their time in office. 

In addition to launching the Benedictine Way Campaign, they’ve been hard at work establishing strong connections between SGA and the college faculty. After meeting with the Executive Board, the piece of SGA which comprises Committee Chairs and other appointed positions, they found that many of them had not yet met the heads of departments at the college that the SGA frequently works with. 

To combat this, Maura and Ben got to work setting up meetings with the IT department, Campus Security, Physical Plant, Dining Services, President Favazza, and many more departments on campus, in order to create a “working relationship that benefits SGA, but also the college.” 

In the spirit of setting SGA up for success, Vice President Mickens said that one early goal of his was to “set up committees that would balance both the senator’s interests and pair them with the chairs whose leadership styles would most complement the senators.” 

Beyond committee assignments, Ben and Maura came into the year hoping to “put [SGA members] in the best position possible to do their jobs.” 

When asked what advice he would give to his freshman self, Vice President Mickens quoted Shakespeare— “this above all, to thine own self be true.” 

President Crump’s answer was “there are no coincidences,” and elaborated that “everyone that goes to this school chose it for a reason, is here for a reason, and can make an impact, whether you think initially you’ll be able to or not.” 

She explained that when she came here as a freshman, she didn’t think she would make much of an impact, but later realized that everyone who goes here has an effect on the school and can make positive change for it. 

Vice President Mickens agreed, “you don’t have to be Student Body President or Vice President to make a difference on campus.”