As a senator for the last two years, Joe Lachance has found his place in the University of Rhode Island community. As a Rhode Island native with roots in Coventry, Lachance always knew that this was the place for him.
A former member of the URI crew team, staff photographer for The Good 5-Cent Cigar, Senate Finance Committee member, Musically Inclined singer and current employee of URI’s Union Express, Lachance has many ideas of how to create positive change at the University.
His campaign centers around issues currently facing the community in hopes of resonating with a student body that values communication, use of resources and the idea that the Student Senate works for students, not the other way around.
His Vice Presidential candidate and friend, John Bagley, is working alongside him to make their campaign about the people. Lachance emphasized that he wants to be someone any student can feel comfortable talking to.
Lachance said he understands the needs of some people aren’t necessarily the needs of everyone, and also that he is willing to change the functions of certain executive committees and the overall functionality of Senate to cater more clearly to the student body.
Why did you decide to run for Student Senate President?
“I think that there’s a lot of change that we can go through,” said Lachance. “I mean, this past year we’ve more or less had kind of a revision. We took a step back, reworked our constitution bylaws, finance handbook, everything. I [also] feel like I’m a good mediator. I feel like I would be able to help organizations not only work better with the Senate, but I’ll be able to actually connect them to the people that they need to use, that people don’t realize that they even have.”
Describe the main points of your platform
“One of the things that I think is just like blatantly obvious is the fact that menstrual products are not provided to students on campus; at least not in the sense that they should be. When you’re a freshman living in a dorm, for the most part, your RAs are really only giving you male contraceptives. That’s ridiculous. They should be able to offer those products or those menstrual products to everybody to use if they so choose.”
Lachance stressed the importance of communication between the Senate and the greater community at URI, specifically referring to the executive committee position of director of communications. He hopes to have more open communication here, as the Senate serves the greater community at the University.
“We work for you,” said Lachance. “And I feel like that hasn’t really been the theme in past years. We’re trying to cycle back toward that.”
One of Lachance’s prominent platforms involves creating a true 24-hour counseling center. According to Lachance, there’s a great need for an improved counseling center on campus. The center is understaffed and in need of improvement. Lachance started a petition to make effective change at the Counseling Center in the future.
“During the day, if you’re having a crisis, you have to go [to the Counseling Center], schedule an appointment and fill out a bunch of paperwork before you can even see anybody,” Lachance said. “And when you see somebody, it’s only a ‘get to know you.’ They will not counsel you during that period, which is weird.”
Creating a student veteran site within the Potter Building is another one of Lachance’s platforms. Moving this group of people, who number more than 400 student veterans at URI, to a more centrally located building to house them is important to this campaign.
“We want them to have a centrally located building where they can house their people, where they can offer different things for the people who are protecting our country and that [are], at the end of the day, trying to get educated,” said Lachance.
Why do you love URI?
“My three sisters, they all went to URI,” Lachance said. “They’ve all turned out successful. Everyone that I’ve ever known that’s come here has always looked back at it with such good memories about how much fun they had here. Honestly, from a financial perspective, this is the land grant University to be at these days because this school is on the rise so much more than any other school. A lot of the buildings are just clearly new, clearly well taken care of and clearly respected. I think that we have a lot of institutions on campus that offer a lot of good, good things.”