Ashley Miller
Assistant Editor

PHOTO BY RIK ANDERSON

The current student body chief justice has been chosen as the new student body president for 2009-2010. During elections, 1,026 students voted for president and Justin Kirk Scarbrough took 625 of those votes. Scarbrough, a junior speech communication major and Holliday native, is looking forward to this opportunity.

“I’m more excited than anything else,” Scarbrough said. “This is a huge time for the University–with the expansion of the campus as well as the thriving student programs and organizations. We truly are at WT in some amazing times.”

Aside from working with the student body, Scarbrough is the president of Circle K, a peer leader intern, secretary of Lambda Pi Eta, a president’s ambassador, an Attebury Honors student and a college facilitator for teen leadership in Amarillo and Canyon.

He credits his position as the student body chief justice on preparing him for student body president.

“It has allowed me to work next to the current student body president and vice president and see the time commitments, responsibilities and possibilities of this position,” Scarbrough said. “I hope to use these things I have learned and expand on them in the next year in order to pass on the legacy of successful student leaders in the future.”

As the new student body president, Scarbrough’s main goal is to give every voice of the student body equal presence. He plans on creating a student advisery board that will be designed specifically for the student body president and will consist of all facets of students: graduates, undergraduates, Greeks, athletes, commuters and others.

“This will create a cabinet-like system that will advise me on the problems that are arising among the student body that often go unseen,” Scarbrough said.

Students are looking forward to a new change in the student body and think Scarbrough will be a great asset to the University.

“I think he’s going to have a better time getting the needs of the students met,” Amanda Almanza, senior general studies major, said. “I just think he is going to be the president that reaches out and listens to what the student body has to say.”

Scarbrough also wants to broadcast the happenings of student government, as well as the other student organizations, through podcasts that will be available through iTunes, Facebook and other technological means that students utilize.

Over the course of next year, he plans on focusing on student representation and diversity.

“There is a plethora of diversity that is often overlooked and we as students, must begin to recognize and respect these differences,” Scarbrough said. “Student representation is also a huge thing for me and I don’t believe a certain type of individual is superior and I wish to change this mindset that only those at the top are the ones with the power.”

He is ecstatic about the new year and is proud to have been chosen as the new student body president.

“It is the student body that elected me and it is the student body that I will serve,” Scarbrough said. “I can’t wait to garner a positive response from those who have supported me (and those who didn’t) along the way. The sheer knowledge that I will have the ability to make everyone’s college experience as great as mine has been something that I look forward to the most.”