A few weeks ago, Bakersfield College held its Student Government Association elections to vote in the new officers for the next school year. The new president and vice-president are James Tompkins and Ashely Nicole Harp.

Tompkins joined BCSGA because he not only wanted his voice, and the voice of other students heard, but also the voice of former incarcerated students, too. He has been part of BCSGA for a year as a senator. As a senator he was able to pass a resolution to have staff on campus complete bias training so that they can see pass their own biases. As the president he would like continue to expand on his work for incarcerated students.

“I still think they are a lot of barriers for education for people that are dealing with incarceration or coming from incarceration and coming to campus I think that working with the faculty and staff, who are awesome, we can really remove some of those early.”

While he does not see himself as a politician he would like to see some reform for students that have been incarcerated or going into the workforce.

His main goal is to give a voice to students that feel like that are not represented.

Harp, on the other hand, is as political science that wants to be a career politician and wants to use SGA to get her foot in the door.

One of her political role models is former-President Barack Obama. She likes his energy and feels like she has the same type of energy in herself.

She said “We are going to be getting a lot more involved this year. We are going to make sure people on campus know who we are. We’re going to make sure that they know are faces.”

She did not want to run for president because she does not have the time for it. The vice-president she will be able to spend more time working with the senators.

She wants to get the community involved even more and have the other campus to get involved as well. She wants to know what the students want to do.