Nicholson is an exercise and sport science major from Ocala, Fla.
The Daily Tar Heel: Why are you running for Miss UNC?
DN: In the summer this idea for my platform kind of came to me randomly one night and I had to take out my iPhone and write it all down in notes, and I was like, what would be the best way to get some support around this? So when the opportunity was presented to run, I chose to do so.
DTH: What is your service project plan?
DN: The platform is called “Discover You(NC).” It would be a project that serves to bridge the gap between the intersections of marginalized groups on campus promoting self-love, self-awareness, and the importance of self-worth kind of has gotten more important to me this year with different things that are going on in the country and how they are translated on to Carolina’s campus … I feel like a lot of times there are protests on campus or different events creating awareness around certain issues dealing with social justice. It is usually like we are fighting for different issues within that one group and I know there is usually a lot of people who support the same ideas and want to help and be an ally, we just don’t always know how to do so, so being able to create conversation, understanding — a better sense of understanding our peers on campus and learning how to support different groups and their journeys to whatever goals or changes that may be presented to those specific communities.
Megan DeJohn
DeJohn is an elementary education and English major from Charlotte.
The Daily Tar Heel: Why are you running for Miss UNC?
MD: I was actually recently at a conference in Houston and we started talking about how in the Houston school district they created a position that brought together all of the resources that served children in the local community and we were like, ‘That’s crazy that that had never existed before.’ And we decided that it would be a really good idea to have that at UNC. And then kind of looking at the resources that we have, we have more than just resources that can help with reading or writing or math but resources that help with children’s whole identity … and so I’m running for Miss UNC because we wanted to kind of give a greater platform to Education Collaboration...
DTH: What is your service project plan?
MD: So it started off originally just as I said, the education — like what we think of originally as education, right, like the amount of times tables we had to memorize or stuff like that … education’s more than that now...it should be about all the different facets of children’s identities … we needed to start doing something to address the systemic inequity that exists in the school systems and one of those things is bringing in children’s multi-identities because every student has something that’s important that they understand, that they know that’s their strength and that that’s their culture or their physicality or like anything that they wanna do, like, we should be able to support them.
Katherine Brinkley
Brinkley is a psychology and Hispanic linguistics major from Winston-Salem.
The Daily Tar Heel: Why are you running?
KB: I wanna be Miss UNC because the lack of funding for pediatric cancer research. My inspiration for all this is that I lost a friend through cancer about three years ago and through that, I kind of saw how it would have helped if there had been more research for the cancer he had because the type of cancer he had was rare and it would have helped if there had been more research.
DTH: If you win, what do you plan to do as your service project?
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KB: I’m planning a festival (or) carnival that would be on campus and open to the whole community. I’m thinking about doing a 5K, a bounce house and some a cappella groups to come. I’m hoping for the kids I work with at (Carolina Pediatric Attention, Love, and Support) to come because this is basically all for them.
DTH: Any last comments you want to leave me with?
KB: I’d like to say that the name of my platform is “More than 4” and the reason for that is only four percent of federal funding for cancer goes to pediatric cancer. And I think that’s insane because our kids deserve way more than that. Adult cancer is extremely important too, but our kids definitely deserve more. Even if I don’t win, I’ve been able to raise awareness and that was the whole goal of my campaign in the first place.
