Carson to pause before hitting go

When Eve Carson talked to her parents after winning Tuesday night’s student body president election, she said they congratulated her and then told her one thing – sleep.

That might be good advice now that Carson has less than two months to prepare for her April 3 inauguration.

Carson spent the past five weeks juggling a hectic campaign season. Her victory against competitor Nick Neptune brought in a record number of voters in Tuesday’s runoff election, with 6,613 students – or 24 percent – casting ballots.

The last student body president runoff in 2005 saw just 19.6 percent of the student body casting ballots.

With more students voting this year, Carson is looking to keep them engaged, but her life isn’t going to get any easier.

“It’s going to be a lot of work, but I’m excited about getting started,” she said.

The next few months will be a balancing act, requiring a lot of priority shifting, she said. During her campaign, Carson has had to step down from many positions in various student groups, including the Honors Program Student Executive Board.

She said her main goal now is to attract students who haven’t been involved in student government to the executive branch, an idea she stressed during her campaign.

“There is so much talent on campus,” said Carson, who has been considered a student government outsider. “There are so many great minds, great workers and great ideas. I want this year to be the year when these people are incorporated into student government.”

While Carson mentioned some tactics for integrating these students, she declined to cite specific potentials for her cabinet.

She said she will spend much of the next few months reaching out to student groups to find the campus’ best minds.

One resource that Carson has is Student Body President James Allred, who will help teach her the ropes. The two have a meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. today, and Carson said she plans to attend meetings with Allred.

“James has built a lot of strong relationships this year, and I hope to carry these over to next year,” she said.

Allred spent a majority of his time before inauguration working closely with former Student Body President Seth Dearmin, learning how the job works.

He said the most important thing for Carson to learn before taking office is how student government functions. “Eve has found herself with an organization with more than 200 people,” Allred said. “She needs to learn what everyone else’s job is, in addition to her own.”

Despite the learning curve, Carson said she is excited about getting to work on her platform planks, especially her “big name” speaker series.

“I really enjoy fundraising, and the speaker series is just going to be this creative brainstorming process and getting in touch with people,” Carson said.

She said she also plans to work on delegating and sharing responsibility, as well as how well she handles criticism.

With all the change, there’s one thing Carson said she does want to keep constant. “I’m not going to give up playing intramural sports.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.