Unopposed secretary candidate Sonal Pai hopes to expand SA awareness, promote wellbeing campaign

By Abigail Panitz and Claire Weddle     2/16/16 8:19pm

Sonal Pai highlighted three roles within the SA — Director of Technology, Director of Marketing, and Historian — as positions that other SA members should use more frequently as resources. As Secretary, she will be in charge of drafting applications for new applicants for these positions. She intends to increase awareness of their functions. She hopes that, in doing so, these people will receive more recognition for their efforts.

Pai, a Hanszen College freshman, also wants to increase general awareness of the SA’s function on campus. She believes that posters and holding one or several open houses this semester to inform the student body on the accomplishments and goals of the SA would increase involvement and make students view the SA in a more positive light.

Pai aims to expand awareness about mental health on campus. Like Frediere, as a New Student Representative on the Wellbeing Committee Pai worked on the Wellbeing App. In this role she helped organize the “Rice, You’re Not Alone” campaign. The campaign involved taking photos during the President’s Study Break last semester of signs students made describing their relationship to mental health.

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Pai is part of an effort to expand “Rice, You’re Not Alone” by collaborating with the Humans of Rice University Facebook page. Working with the SA, the page posts photos with accompanying stories of Rice students with mental issues. Students wishing to share their stories can do so publicly or anonymously. Currently, one story is available online.

“It opens everyone’s eyes up to the fact that there are disorders on campus and that we can work to improve them together,” she said.

Pai is running unopposed. She hopes to serve as a moderate voice in SA Executive meetings.

“Especially being one of the younger people on the board [I can see myself] being more of a mediator and being someone who sees both sides of the situation,” she said.

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