ASMSU President Katherine “Cookie” Rifiotis holds these sessions for students as the only undergraduate student on the search committee. She said she believes that getting more input from students allows her to bring a more informed opinion to the committee. 

These forums allow students to add input without as much presence from faculty and staff.

“I’ve never come to anything specific like this, so I thought it was really cool,” senior Music Education major MyKenzie Miller said. “(Rifiotis) seems really awesome, I had never met her before today, but she definitely cares, which is really amazing.”

The group of students at the forum spoke for about an hour and a half and addressed the four main guiding questions that Rifiotis had scripted: what are challenges that the modern student faces, what does the next MSU president look like, what part of community do I want to be part of, and what do I want MSU to look like in five years?

“I wouldn’t want a politician. I wouldn’t want a governor or someone that has been in politics, because I feel like there’s a lot of issues and behind the scenes information, that students would not trust them,” Carla Simone, a sophomore GA representative of the College of Arts and Letters, said. “If someone came in with a governmental-based background, the students would not trust them. We really need a new person who can be transparent and relatable. What I would want to see is someone who is genuine and maybe has had some teaching experience.”

Chris Long, the dean of the College of Arts and Letters, was present at the sessions. He spoke about the presidential search as a way to address the culture at MSU.

“One of the things that we have been talking about as the Deans has been that there are broader cultural issues that have to be addressed,” Long said. “Yes, there were some major failures with respect to the Nassar case, but there’s a broader set of questions on how power is deployed — abuse of power, issues of harassment, issues of how people are interacting with one another. This goes beyond MSU. I’d like to see a president who is able to give a statement about the broader questions of power in higher education and how it is deployed.”

Other issues that were brought up were the rigidity and impersonal nature of communication between the administration and the student body.

“Sometimes when students see this really long thing and it looks super academic, they’re like, ‘I already have to go and read all this academic stuff all the time.’ It looks really fancy with huge words to make it sound super educated,” Miller said. “Sometimes for students it looks like a lot, and it looks unapproachable. I think in the world where we live in today where we’re constantly on our phones and laptops and there’s a lot of picture-driven stuff and small captions, stuff like that is more accessible." 

A full schedule of student forums, all of which are available to the general student public and not limited to members of the particular college, can be found on the ASMSU Facebook page.