Since his second week at Missouri Southern in fall 2008, Johnathan Saunders has always been a part of Student Senate.

In next week’s elections, students can choose whether to vote him in as the next academic year’s Senate President. He’ll probably win it, too, seeing as how he’s the only presidential candidate on the ballot.

Saunders, junior political science major, graduated from Neosho High School in 2008. In his past three years on Student Senate, he has been chairs for the Senate’s campus safety committee and sustainability committee. With his help, several recycling bins were placed around campus.

He would say this past year, though, has been the Senate’s most successful.

“We’ve effectively rebranded ourselves with a new logo, new constitution, new committees, new members, great ideas,” Saunders said. “We’ve gotten so much done in just this one year, and we have a lot more to do.”

If elected, one of Saunders’ plans is to have the Student Senate’s internal system of records work more efficiently by using legislative numbering and dating. The goal is to have a system where, in the future, anybody can easily look up the work of today’s Senate.

“[Right now,] we don’t know what anybody did four years ago,” Saunders said.

This isn’t Saunders’ first time in the running. He ran last year against current Student Senate President Darrell Sour.

“By losing, I actually found new things to get involved in and I think a lot of the things this year wouldn’t have happened if I had won the presidency, so it was a blessing in disguise,” Saunders said.