Martel College rising senior Kendall Vining has been elected the new Student Association (SA) president for 2021-2022, and Mario Escobar, a biochemistry and cell biology graduate student, has been elected president of the Graduate Student Association (GSA).
The incoming presidents and their cabinets are already facing a fall semester that will look drastically different from the last academic year, thanks in part to an overall easing of coronavirus restrictions.
“The events from last year took everyone by surprise and unfortunately that resulted in lots of missed milestones for our graduate students' life experiences, as well as less opportunities to meet more of their fellow graduate students,” Escobar said.
In addition to his work in Rice’s Hilton Lab, Escobar has been an active member of the grad student community since arriving in 2018, previously serving the GSA as vice president of finance as well as on the Graduate Student Advisory Board in the Wiess School of Natural Sciences.
“This year we are very interested in increasing the cohesiveness and sense of unity among the graduate students,” Escobar said. “With that in mind, we are trying to develop new programs and reimplement current activities in ways that will parallel our past events, while making sure everyone both is and feels safe.”
Vining said she’s looking forward to ensuring all students get the full “Rice experience,” and plans to actively reach out to student groups in order to hear a range of voices. And hopefully, SA meetings will once again be held in person this fall, though streaming options will remain in place to ensure broad accessibility to the weekly proceedings.
Vining is an English major with a minor in politics, law and social thought. Most recently, she served the SA as internal vice president. Last year, Vining was also instrumental in founding Rice for Black Life, a student group that raised over $93,000 to fight anti-Black violence — and inspired other college campuses to work toward that same goal.
In her campaign statement, Vining identified three key areas she’d explore during her presidency: advocacy, anti-racism and adjustment. Addressing the latter, she wrote:
“This year, I explored and enacted structural changes within student government that stemmed from my openness to exploring new ideas. As your president, I will examine existing issues within student government, reimagine them, and ultimately make changes to better the combined effectiveness of the SA leadership team’s service to you.”
Baker College junior Lily Sethre-Brink, a double major in anthropology and social policy analysis, is the new external vice president for the SA. Martel College senior Madison Bunting, who is triple majoring in cognitive sciences, psychology and computational and applied mathematics, is the internal vice president.
The SA treasurer is Martel College sophomore Elliot Riesman-Tremonte, who is majoring in social sciences, and the secretary is Sid Richardson College sophomore Savannah Parrot, majoring in humanities.
Joshua Moore is the new VP of equity and inclusion for the GSA. Siqi Du is the VP of community engagement. Li Chieh Lu is the VP of finance and Adeline Supandy is the VP of administration. All four are graduate students in biochemistry and cell biology. The VP of professional development is Cynthia Martinez, a graduate student in the history department. Lucas Camargo, the VP of student advocacy, is a graduate student in the bioengineering department.