Editor's note: The following interviews have been edited for clarity.

The Independent sat down with president and vice president candidates for the student body government elections. Polls opened at 8:00 a.m. on Monday and close at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Students can vote online for ASFLC elections.

Cody Stroup: President Candidate

1. What prior experience do you have that makes you suitable for the position you are running for?

I have a lot of professional experience inside the school and outside of the school. As far working for the school, I have worked as a Student Ambassador, that’s actually how I met Madison, that was mostly the recruitment aspect. We were running all the events we have on campus, giving students tours, reaching out to them. I have been a student here for three years. I have been involved in the School of Business Administration program and I am an International Business major. As far as outside of that, I have worked several professional jobs. Before I even got to Fort Lewis I was a licensed insurance agent and I have worked in a lot of customer service positions. Right now I work for a point in sale software company.

2. What are your plans for changing the culture of ASFLC? Can you give one example from your past that you have been able to change the culture of an organization or club?

I like to unify the different communities we have around campus because there are a lot of subsets I consider myself apart of different communities but I would like to see more. I have had multiple leaderships positions. I was the captain of the soccer team for three years in high school. Anywhere I work really, once I get my feet on the ground and get used to working there and comfortable. That is how it was in the Office of Admissions.

3. What are you core values that help shape the way you lead?

One of my top strengths is my work ethic, it is something I grew up with. I always work really hard in everything I do, and I am actually disappointed if I don’t put in my best effort.

4. What is your vision for ASFLC and how do you translate that into the future?

For ASFLC, I would like to see them more involved. Before I was sitting on the table as a senator, I actually didn’t know what they did, and I would prefer everyone knows what we do and that it could even be a more influential organization on campus. Of course, everyone knows what Student Union Productions is doing and some of the larger organizations. I think we can work in different ways that haven’t been used in the past to make it more of an important organization. A lot of collaboration. I think it is going to take working with different organizations on campus but also in the community. I consider myself to be pretty good at networking and talking to people and that can be really valuable because you never know who you are talking to, you could be talking to someone that you can form a partnership with. I would like to work more with the community of Durango. I think there is slightly a disconnect between FLC and the city of Durango.

5. How are you going to go about getting the table more involved and engaged during meetings?

I think we are going to set some ground rules. I think in the future we are going to have it where you bring your laptop to the meeting and use it when we are going over the budget, or something like that, or use it if they cannot see the agenda and have it pulled up on their laptop. It’s not as professional as it could be.

6. Describe in a elevator pitch why you want to be elected to this position?

We want to focus on student retention and enrollment, it's been an issue a for a couple of years. The spring of my freshman year is when I really started to hear about it more and I mean we really want to see what they problem is, why aren’t students staying here and what can we do to help fix that? I would love to see more events that keep students out with us and really see what everyone wants. No one really knows what we do so I think feedback and talking to the students is going to be a big part of it.

7. How are you and your running mate going to work together to achieve the same goals?

We have a really good work dynamic and we knew immediately when we started working at the Office of Admissions. She has been a really good friend of mine. We have really good communication. I think we have a really good dynamic. We are friends but not to the point where we are going to mess around in professional positions. We just work really well together.

Madison Klearman: Vice President Candidate

1. What prior experience do you have that makes you suitable for running for the position you are running for?

Originally my involvement started as an Orientation Leader. Then I moved on to the Financial Allocation Board as student at large to give opinions that I felt students at large had and to bring that representation to meetings. After that I moved on to be a student ambassador in the office of admissions, I ended up working their full time for the last month of summer last summer and that’s where I ended up meeting Cody and we realize that we both had a really big passion for the school and we are really hoping to work on student retention to make sure that people are coming back and we realized that we worked really well as a team professionally and we aren’t afraid to tell each other when one is pushing it to far or telling each other what the other person needs to be doing. We decided that through that experience we were really prepared to change the school in the things we wanted to change and that the students wanted changed. So, we decided to run together and sat down to discuss what our platform was and what we are trying to do and just how to ensure the students voices are heard.

2. What are your plans for changing the culture of ASFLC? Can you give one example from your past that you have been able to change the culture of an organization or club?

A lot of what we want to do is focused on freshman and our multicultural community. 47% of our community at FLC considers themselves to be multicultural, so what we are hoping to do for freshman and multicultural communities is create safe spaces around camps to add to the cultural of FLC of being very unique because of these special communities we have around campus and we want to make sure they are especially supported. We also want to be known for bigger and better events. Different events we want to get campus knowing about so that we have more attendees. What we have found is that people feel like they belong at this school if they are included in something. If they have an RSO they are involved in. If they have events they are constantly going to. If they feel like their teachers are reaching out to them. Or they have a good friend group. So, we really think that different events can help facilitate that. In high school, we had this huge event every year called, Balto, and basically what is does is raises money for one nonprofit of our choice and we go through a lot of different ones to pick it and this past year the school raised over a million dollars. So, what I did in high school to help with that is I applied to be a Balto candidate, so I, myself, had to raise $2,000 that went to that overall budget. So, I think getting to go around and explain the nonprofit that we were trying to support and having to put out money jars really helped me show the school that I have a personal connection with the school and a passion about supporting the school and the different events that they chose to put on and the different people they chose to support. It made a $2,000 difference if nothing else.

3. What are you core values that help shape the way you lead?

What I really have been focusing on these past few years as my professional career and who I am as a person evolves is taking a step back from leadership and also being able to listen. I like to figure out where the balance is between those things because I think that is the only way to work well in a team setting. I also think a big thing that helps shape how I lead at the school is my passion for the school. I had a really rough freshman year and after that I really ended up finding my place here and so I never want anyone to leave. So, that is a big part of what drives me to do stuff for the school. Also, honesty, integrity, and all of the typical things someone would say. I defiantly value involvement. I value our multicultural communities and everything that they bring. I defiantly value having an open conversation in the school. For example, our campaign is meant to be more of a listening campaign because it is not what me and my running mate want done, it’s what the students want done and it our job to represent that. So, we don’t just get to tell people what we want to change, we like to hear. So, I think just the passion to make this school is all aspects better for all students that is something I really value doing.

4. What is your vision for ASFLC and how do you translate that into the future?

What me and running mate are hoping to do is create a little more professionalism on the table. We want to make sure that electronics are put away. That we are respectful to the guest speakers. That we are taking good notes. Other than that, we would like to meet for dinner every Wednesday together, we do it now, but it is not mandatory, and we don’t want it to be mandatory, but we’d like it to be more of a priority just for connections among the table. I also want to have more involvement with each of our committees. We have four different committees, legislative affairs, student services, public relations, and constitution committee. The vice president is kind of like the supporter for the senators and what I want to do is be in constant contact with them, monthly meetings with them to see what the committees are doing and making sure that they are always working on a project or brainstorming ideas for a project to make sure that we get more stuff done and I also really want to work on each senators outreach, this includes me and my running mate as well, to our RSO’s and working with them and just making sure we really have relationships with them and I think that is really important. There is going to be a lot of changes in how the table is ran but we also want to make sure that with the senators we aren’t saying it going to be this, this, and this, but we are saying these are our ideas, if you differ from them, how can we come to an agreement that meets in the middle.

5. How are you going to go about getting the table more involved and engaged during meetings?

One of the things that I would like to see that would facilitate the changes I had just talked about is I would like to have binders to keep in the office with blank paper in there. I think that when it is just us during our table meetings, feel free to take notes on your laptop but it has become a little bit of an issue and I think that people are taking notes they do that, I just don’t want our guest speakers wondering. So, I really want to have thing available for them to be able to take really efficient notes and maybe transferring them to their computer at a different time or maybe raise their hands and let the speaker know that they will be taking notes on their laptop and asking them if it is ok. I really want to make sure that apart of the dinner’s on Wednesday, is creating a team because everyone works better together than alone and the truth of the matter is that there are disagreements on the table and so I think that team building activities, our retreats that we go on, and everything from dinner to out of school events will be really important to kind of building our relationship and realizing that we can have different views and still respect each other and still show our own voices. Also, being able to encourage people. Raise your hand, say what you want because you are a voice for the students and what needs to be heard, needs to be heard here and really just giving people that confidence because I don’t think it’s people not wanting to, I just think it’s sometimes people can be a little bit reserved but speaking up about that stuff is really important.

6. Describe in a elevator pitch why you want to be elected to this position?

I want to be elected into this position because I am really passionate about retention, recruitment, our budget, and I think that no matter what I am still going to be sitting on the table as a senator. I am going to try and go get a seat at the table. It’s not like if I lose, I am all of the sudden uninterested in the student’s voices because that’s what I am really passionate about. So, I think that kind of shows a little bit of how much I care and how much I really want to represent the students in a way that they want to be represented and a way that is different and I really want to be elected because I feel like my running mate and I can bring unconventional ideas to the table and change the way things have been ran in the past to facilitate student voices but also make sure to get stuff done. I also think that it is important that I have an interest in everything from our small communities on campus to mental health to our budget and our numbers about retention and our numbers with recruitment and just the involvement in how I want to have the students voices be heard in all of those aspects on campus.

7. How are you and your running mate going to work together to achieve the same goals?

I think that me and my running mate really balance each other out very well. We are both really good speakers and like I said the reason why we decided to run together in the first place is because we realize that balance by working in a professional setting together and I think that the most important thing is being able to respectfully give each other’s opinion and kind of call each other out and then sit down and be able to say you said this and I said that, so how can we meet in the middle, how can we make this work. I think it is also really important to have a friendship involved not to the point where we have control over the whole table because we are friends and we want to fulfill each other’s goals but have a solid foundation because I think with friendship comes respect and I think that is going to be one of the most important and valuable things to bring to the table in the sense of me and my running mate working together. I also think that open communication is really important. That is something me and my running mate both value heavily and have practiced in our professional settings and so we are used to it. We are very open with each other. A lot of communication going on constantly will keep us grounded and I think that all of those things will really help us achieve working together in a way we can help the senators and the school and not be in each other’s way because we have disagreements.