Page and Rockey begin their term

As a new school year begins, so does the presidency of Student Body President Jacob Page and Vice President Derek Rockey. Page and Rockey sat down for an exclusive interview with the Liberty Champion to talk about their vision for the future.

“The thing we want to improve this year is the student environment, and we’ll do that by implementing school spirit, school traditions and values that really carry people and bring people together,” Page said.

Page and Rockey are hoping to foster a spirit of unity among the students.

One way Page and Rockey are working to build unity is by ensuring that all of Liberty University’s events are student-led.

“Student Activities is one of the most successful organizations on campus, and though they have a boss who is not a student, they have people who are students who work for them,” Rockey said. “When you put a little bit of power with administration and with the students, but the students are the front liners, it’s so successful.”

Page and Rockey said administration is more likely to listen to ideas when those ideas are coming from the student body through Student Government Association.

“Derek and I are trying to set a big vision to get people excited about the school that we all love, to bring people together and to serve our community in the most effective way possible,” Page said.

One way they are doing this is by partnering with as many departments as possible. For example, SGA partnered with the athletics programs for many of their school spirit initiatives.

They will also be partnering with the Career Center to bring career opportunities to clubs, as well as LU Serve to bring Christian service opportunities to clubs. Page and Rockey hope that this will encourage more people to get involved in community on campus.

Several events are being planned for the school year, including a grand opening ceremony for the newly-expanded football stadium Oct. 13. This will be the first home game of the season with the stadium fully completed.

While the first Academic Lawn tailgate, which brought hundreds of students to the lawn at the base of the Montview steps, was a “test run,” Page and Rockey are planning to move the rest of the tailgates to the lawn as well. They have plans to eventually get commuters involved with tailgating on Main Campus.

Keeping the Liberty tradition alive by connecting students is also important to them.

“That’s why people have truly come here, regardless of all the brick and glass and the multi-million dollar campus we have,” Rockey said.

Another thing Page and Rockey want to focus on is building a Liberty family, so that when students graduate, they will want to come back to the school. To do this, the duo plans to partner with the alumni association.

They also want to roll out a school ring tradition in the next few months. Juniors would receive a class ring they could then wear for their senior year and beyond graduation. Page and Rockey hope this will unify graduates and undergraduates.

In addition to making changes noticeable to eyes outside the SGA office, Page and Rockey plan on restructuring the internal workings of SGA. The new president and vice president want to change the class officer position back to what it used to be.

“We want to put the (class) presidents back in the Senate and the vice presidents back in the House,” Rockey said. “On top of that, we want to have the presidents serve on an events commission, so they can plan events for their own class.”

Rockey added that they would love for students to be able to wear shorts to classes on hot days. However, bills such as this would also have to go through the House.

They realize they have ambitious goals, and every endeavor may not be accomplished this year.

“We have a lot of great ideas we want to see happen, but in the time frame that we’ve been given, it’s very hard and difficult to get things moving,” Page said.

However, the duo will feel accomplished if they can lay the groundwork for future SGA leaders.

“If we can set the foundation for the next administrations down the road, then they can focus on other things,” Rockey said. “Regardless if we agreed with past administrations all the way back to when SGA started, they helped us come to this point, and we’re thankful for that.”