On Nov. 4, Creighton students will have the opportunity to vote between two candidates for Creighton Students Union President in the annual CSU elections.

To help students learn more about who could potentially be representing them, the Creightonian Opinion Section conducted interviews with both candidates. We asked the candidates what motivated them to run for office, what they would hope to accomplish as president and what makes them passionate about Creighton. To read the other candidate’s interview, click here.

Kayman Nixon is a Heider College of Business sophomore from Sacramento, Calif., studying marketing. Running alongside him for CSU Vice President is Zach Pierce, also a sophomore in the Heider College of Business.

Why are you running for CSU president?

I’ve like always been involved with executive positions like throughout my whole life, so I want to be able to make a difference. I want to make a difference in students’ lives, whoever I’m affecting, or whoever I’m trying to help out. I want to be able to make a difference on a grand scale, so that’s why I’m running for CSU president. Honestly, last year I wasn’t thinking actually like I should run for CSU president, but last year I was involved with IRHG [Inter Residence Hall Government] and stuff, and this year, I was like, “you know, I could do this,” so I decided a couple months ago it was something to look into. I’m all excited about it.

What makes you qualified to be CSU president?

I was involved in IRHG last year. I was a senator for Swanson Hall, so we did a lot of programs and stuff. I got involved with IRHG originally because it was like the first thing; they get you first week of school and stuff, and I was just like, “OK, cool.” And I really liked that last year, and this year I’m the Heider Hall president, so basically it’s same kind of deal with IRHG except I’m on campus action committees. But also, I’ve just had a lot of leadership experiences throughout my life, just different clubs, organizations in high school and just a lot of leadership. Like I was saying before, I’ve just always been involved on an executive level.

Why did you decide to run as a sophomore?

Well I know the previous president [John McCoy] first ran as a sophomore, and I just thought, if I could start it now and you know, just get involved as early as you can, I feel like that’s better than waiting until junior year. But I don’t know, it just seemed like the right time.

What specifically do you want to do as CSU president?

Our three things that we’re running on are transparency, awareness and unity.

Transparency is, like I was saying, that we want to make sure there’s a connection between CSU and the students. And the way we really want to do that is after CSU meetings where there’s a new issue, something that we’ll eventually be voting on, we’d want to send out like an email to the students or send out a poll or an app or something and just be like, “hey, this is what we talked about right now, this is what we’re thinking about, what do you think about this?” so that we get student feedback early on in the process so that students are playing an active role within CSU. I know this past year they passed the tobacco-free campus thing, but one, I did not know that was through CSU at all, and two, I’m not opposed to it, but if someone was opposed to it, it would be nice to have [his or her voice] heard in that process early on.

Two, we want to raise the awareness of clubs and stuff on campus, just the different organizations and all the events they do. What we really want to do with that is just re-do CU Involved. CU Involved is a really good idea, but just a flawed system. So what we want do is get a web or app designer in here and make it into an app and have it so it’s like a central hub for any activities going on at Creighton, and for all the organizations and stuff so you could subscribe to whatever club you want and get push notifications to your phone. We would hope to have that done before Welcome Week so we could have it as one of the things, you know, like GroupMe and guidebook apps, and have a CU Involved app, so that students can know where they could go to get involved. 

And the last thing is we want to have the CSU representatives really step back and figure out what their schools are interested in. We feel like there’s a lot of animosity between the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business and College of Nursing. So we really want those student representatives to see like, “hey, this is what our students are thinking,” and bring that back to CSU and really represent their schools. We also really want them to work together with the senates of their schools and to make sure that they’re talking with their students, and we also want to make sure that we’re talking more with the grad students, so it’s just more of a united campus. 

Building off of that, how would you like to increase student involvement with CSU?

 We really just want to, I guess promote the representatives. We really want to do a luncheon or something, just like a “meet your representatives” event early on once they get elected, because they get elected at the same time we do, and hype it up so people come and know who their representatives are, who they would talk to about their problems. And also we’d really want to, really promote just like coming into our offices, the executives’ offices, because we have office hours. We want students to come in there if they have something wrong, or a problem, and just know that there’s someone they can come to.

If you could change one thing about Creighton, what would it be?

The weather, definitely the weather. Like this right here, I don’t know, I was deciding whether or not I should pull out the winter coat because it’s 35 degrees. At home if it gets to 60 degrees we’re pulling out the coats. If it could just be sunny or 75 degrees year round, that would be perfect.

Basketball or soccer?

Basketball. Soccer games here are way better than I would have ever expected, but basketball games here are just so much fun. Basketball’s my favorite sport.

Christmas at Creighton or Fallapalooza? 

Oh gosh, these are the hard questions. Christmas at Creighton. That was so awesome last year – they had the reindeer, and everything in the sleigh, just waiting for the lights to turn on, that was awesome. I loved it.

Why should Creighton students vote for you?

I think that I would be a good representative for the school. I think that I would bring a fresh face to CSU. I have a ton of great ideas to get the students more involved with CSU and really make it an organization for the students, as it was intended to be. I want to make it a lot of fun. I want to make some of the ideas within the legislative side of CSU more fun. I want people to really want to join CSU. The Nursing School has like three representative positions, and it’s hard to fill those positions. I want it to be like something where people really want to join, like, “wow this is CSU; it’s so cool; it’s so much fun. Let’s be a part of this.”

Kayman Nixon (left) is running for Creighton Students Union President, while Zach Pierce (right) is running for Creighton Students Union Vice President

Photo Courtesy of Kayman Nixon