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Beat Q&A
Why I Wrote The Story
Mere days after winning the vice-presidency for the University of Georgia's Student Government Association, Jhaycee Barnes sat down with me to discuss the direction she sees the new administration steering the university towards, as well as some of the initiatives that are most important to her personally. This interview highlighted for me the importance of following interview protocol, such as preparing questions, asking the interviewer to identify themself, and acquiring multimedia aspects of the interview. Speaking with Vice-President Elect Barnes set the ground work for improvement and laid out expectations of how my following interviews should be handled.
March 2025
Profile Story
Jhaycee Barnes, a third-year political science and economics major at the University of Georgia, recently ran for, and won, the role of student body vice-president on the Impact UGA ticket alongside John Neely (president) and Talha Ali (treasury).
Q: How did you find yourself on the Impact ticket and what areas do you feel like you and your team members are most equipped to work on together?
A: I actually decided I wanted to run my freshman year here. I got involved in First-Year Senate when I first got on campus, and I really enjoyed being able to research campus issues, work with campus admin, solve those problems, and just kind of work to make UGA a better place. I had that goal early on, that I wanted to continue to do that throughout my college career. So when John Neely, president elect, asked me if I wanted to run on his ticket with him, I was like, “of course, I would love to.” In terms of what we're most equipped to work on, John Neely was also on student government through the senate as well. We have a lot of experience when it comes to working with campus admin. We've been able to build a lot of really good relationships over the years. So I think anything that requires the collaboration of the university we're really equipped with, because we've already kind of built those relationships.
Q: What do you see as the biggest issue for the student body on campus right now, and what is your plan to address that?
A: That's a really good question. The biggest issue that I see on campus is that students don't know where to go for different resources. I think the resources are there. A lot of them just can be difficult on a campus as large as UGA to know. One of the ways that our administration plans to address them is just being openly available. We want to make sure that all students across campus know that we're here. We want to be visible. Whether that's tabling for student government, interacting with student organizations, sending out communication via email, we want to make sure that everyone knows that. I think that once we open that communication, the other issues on campus will start to present themselves. From there, we can start to address those issues as well.
Q: I know y'all have talked about digitizing ID. Is there a specific initiative on your ticket that you're really excited to address and dive into head first?
A: One thing that I'm really excited about is our assistance program, Round Up for the Big Dog. Making food more accessible for students on campus is pivotal in the college experience. Making that more accessible is something that I really feel strongly about. Also making textbooks and classroom resources more accessible. We've already been talking with campus admin, and a lot of them don't realize the barriers that students have when it comes to getting resources. That's something I'm really passionate about because that's such a simple way to improve the campus experience early on in our administration.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity.