2024-2025 ASMSU leaders announced

On a sunny April morning last Tuesday, students began casting their votes to decide the makeup of the 2024-25 MSU student government. Candidate pairs Jacob Zink and Bailey Jones along with Zane Horst and Josey Blazer campaigned on Centennial Mall, flagging down  passersby to give them information about the elections to a backdrop of hacky sacking, the smell of hot dogs and the sound of music cutting through the air. 

On the final day of elections, April 17, a blanket of snow covered Bozeman. The cold weather wasn't enough to stop students from engaging with the final event of the 2024 ASMSU election cycle, “Here's the scoop on Elections.” A table was set up in the Renne Library to give out ice cream and the line was out the door. 

The following morning after votes were tallied, the link on the MSU elections page prompting students to view their 2024 candidates read “Click Here to Meet YOUR 2024-2025 ASMSU Leaders.” Through the link the new ASMSU student senators were listed, and only one executive candidate pair remained: Jacob Zink and Bailey Jones.

An article from the MSU News Service posted on April 22 revealed that 1,277 students voted this year. This is over 600 votes fewer than the 1,909 votes cast in the 2023 elections. 

The 2024-25 academic year will mark Jacob Zink’s second year as ASMSU’s president, making him the 5th two-term president in the past 50 years; This will be Jones’s first year working in student government.

According to ASMSU President Jacob Zink, who is currently a junior double majoring in business and political science with a minor in sustainability, his personal experience with student government has been somewhat unlikely. 

“My perception of student government in high school was that it was mostly just a poster-making 101 kinda thing. But when I got involved in my fraternity Sigma Nu freshman year, they motivated me to pursue student government. So I got involved in the Residence Hall Association. After that, I applied and ran for senate [in] the College of Business. Which led to me running for president last year with Melissa Ramirez. I decided to run again this year to deliver on what we had promised,” Zink said.

Zink said that he is hopeful that he will be able to do more for the students of MSU in his second year as president. “One year is great, but the reality is you come in and you have two semesters. The first semester is trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And then second semester, you're trying to do things, but before you know it, the semester is gone. Whereas the second year, you get two semesters where you're not worrying about learning things.”

When Zink gets a break from his duties as a student politician, he is involved with the symphony orchestra, where he plays the trumpet. “I've played for 11 years. I started in fifth grade and I was really into jazz in middle school and high school. But now I exclusively [play] classical music and music with the Symphony Orchestra.”

The 2024-2025 academic year will be Bailey Jones’s first experience in ASMSU, but far from her first experience with leadership. According to Jones, a junior who is majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology, she has previously served as president of her Delta Gamma sorority chapter and is still involved heavily with leadership there. “I wanted to become a leader in ASMSU so I can reach more people than I have already reached,” she said.

There is a lot that Jones hopes to accomplish in her time as vice president. “There are going to be big shoes to fill, [Ramirez] has done everything in her willpower to accomplish her goals, but I think the largest thing I want to accomplish is reaching more students than ASMSU already is. Also, for Jacob and my goals specifically, we want to make campus as safe and affordable as possible,” she said.

When Jones isn't leading her sorority or running for student government, she can be found hiking, fishing and doing anything outdoors. “You'll catch me outdoors all summer long,” she said.

Zink and Jones will both be graduating in the spring of 2025, leaving two spots for future ASMSU leaders to fill. 

Until then, Jones says her door is always open. “I want to hear what's going on in your life. I want to hear what's going on within the MSU community that I can't see. I want to know where I can help you as a student. I want to know how I can benefit you academically, personally, socially, anything. My door is always open and I want to hear from all students,” she said.

Students voting in the general election also had the chance to vote for their college’s student senators and six at-large senators. The recently elected senators for next year are:

• Matthew Gozo and Sophia Franzia in the College of Agriculture 
• Christopher Timboe and Dillon Solway in the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship
• Rebekah Storlie in the College of Education, Health and Human Development 
• Charlie Q. Ostergren, Arden Reid, Victoria White and Luna Richards in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering 
• Grace Ramey, Finola Doyle, Katelyn Nutt and Allie Hinds in the College of Letters and Science 
• Taylor Crowley, Joseph “Lenny” Treim, Kailer Hegna, Taylor Bookwalter, Walter Scheldorf and Lizzy Lingenfelter in the at-large positions.