The Poole and Large Administration, consisting of President Noah Poole and Vice President Brenna Large of the “Elevate” ticket, governed Ball State’s student body as part of the Student Government Association (SGA) for the 2024-25 academic year.
Their campaign’s platform points focused on transportation, student experience, safety, health advocacy and campus life.
The Daily News completed its yearly evaluation of how the administration delivered on its promises.
Student Experience: Somewhat Complete
What was initially said: The Poole and Large Administration wanted to incentivize student opportunities by reforming BennyLink, a platform designed to connect students with various student organizations. They also wanted to encourage an increase in the pay of minimum wage jobs on campus and recognize and celebrate student participation in programming and events.
What happened: They worked with the Office of Student Life to help make campus events a “unique” experience. One way they did this was by working with Ball State’s Transportation Services. According to an Oct. 5 post from SGA’s Instagram, buses ran with stops at North Dining, the C1 Parking Lot, the New York Parking Garage and the Alumni Center.
To celebrate student participation, SGA also hosted an open table for the Black Student Association (BSA).
“We had a round table discussion with them to make sure that they felt like their voices were getting heard,” Large said.
SGA also hosted a 2024 election night watch party, which several student organizations attended, such as the College Republicans, College Democrats and the Young Democratic Socialists of America. Students also had the opportunity to join these organizations while waiting for the results.
The BennyLink transformation came about because many student organizations have been having problems with it. Some problems students faced with Bennylink were difficulty searching organizations by name, difficulty logging service hours and navigating the platform’s calendar.
President Noah Poole explained the change and what students can expect as a result.
“Ball State is moving forward with a new provider. I would call it a student organization platform,” Poole said.
Poole expects students to see the change finalized by orientation for the 2025-2026 academic year.
To address the administration's minimum wage point, Poole and Large worked with the Dining Advisory Board and Karen Adkins, the senior executive director of auxiliary services for university food, beverage, conference services, and special events.
“We did receive a little bit of pushback with that. We continue to bring it up with administrators, just to be like, ‘This is still something students want,’” Large said.
Poole said they picked this up from Gassensmith and Lindstrand’s 2024-2025 administration, but because not all the committee members returned, they had to pivot as well.
At the end of the day, Poole explained, the executive board doesn’t have that final say, but they will still be the advocates.
“We are the largest advocates for this, but at the end of the day, the final decision comes down to the budgetary planners,” Poole said
Safety: Complete
What was initially said: The administration wanted to create a new app called “Reach Out,” inspired by the Syracuse University app called “Orange Safe App,” to increase awareness of programs for the “Red Zone” and increase transparency with university offices.
What Happened: Large said they didn’t want to create a new app since the university had just rolled out the new MyBallState program.
Instead, they worked with University Marketing and Communications and added a widget on the home page filled with resources for students to access that says, “Need help?”
The administration initially wanted to create the app because they argued that, depending on where you are in Muncie, students must call different numbers to contact the Muncie Police Department or the Ball State University Police Department.
“If you're in the jurisdiction of the campus police of Ball State, there's a different phone number. Many students don't know that phone number. If it is an emergency, that extra second between switching those lines could be crucial,” Poole said.
For increased Red Zone awareness, SGA worked with Health Promotion and Advocacy (HPA) by providing funding so they could put up signs around campus during the first six weeks of the school year and try to organize more events in the future.
Large gave some examples of what they helped them buy, including alcohol demonstrations that allowed students to see how much two ounces is and so on.
Another purchase was during homecoming when SGA helped buy water bottles and liquid IV for HPA to pass out to students.
“[We’re] really making sure we were promoting student safety and [students] were aware of ways to keep them safe,” Large said.
The final point was transparency, one of the areas where Poole and Large had some pushback. They worked with many offices on campus, the main one being the Office of Student Affairs and those below that office, to try and understand the importance of making data understandable for students.
However, Large acknowledged impacts may not be seen until next year. Still, Poole wants to increase communication from the university’s end.
“Ultimately, we're SGA, a student organization. We don't control the press releases or the safety information that's dispersed by the university directly,” Poole said.
Poole added that the administration does control SGA’s Instagram account. He said one improvement they made was to increase the postings “five times over from last year.” As a result, one of the key updates shared is regarding the press releases from Senate meetings, allowing the student body to stay informed about the topics that are discussed.
Health and Advocacy: Partiality Complete
What was initially said: The administration wanted to include mental health days for students in the academic calendar, improve disability awareness throughout campus and the Muncie community and show more support for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April.
What Happened: The mental health days did not get moved forward, even after trying to work with the University Calendar Committee, but they still advocated for them by working with the Office of Student Affairs to try to ensure that faculty understood mental health.
One issue they had with implementing the days is that Ball State’s academic calendar is made out years ahead.
“There's this balance between professors’ need to fulfill their obligations, which includes having students in their classroom regularly. At the same time, students need to have the ability to leave class,” Large said.
When trying to increase mental health awareness on campus, one way they did this was by having mental health resources available for students during the 2024 SGA election night watch party.
Poole wants the students to know one thing: “Student voices are being heard.”
“The concerns of students with providing safe spaces, both in and outside of the classroom, [is] to feel comfortable,” Poole said.
To improve disability awareness and knowledge, Poole and Large said they worked with Courtney Jarrett, the director of disability services at Ball State. They did this because they wanted to continue working on making accommodations in the classrooms.
Large said they are “lucky” since there is current legislation that would mandate all videos have closed captions, which will be seen in future years. Another way they are doing this will be seen over the summer, with better ways to report outages of the automatic doors.
“So most buildings with automatic doors, while they work 99% of the time, that 1% of the time can be an inconvenience to someone,” Poole said.
To report outages now, students have to file a wide work order form, which Poole said can be “difficult” for some to fill out, due to a lack of access to or knowledge of the required form.
“Have [students] directly report these by just quickly taking out their phone or cellular device, following the link, reporting the outage,” he said.
To make that easier, they worked with Ball State’s Facilities Planning and Management and are creating QR codes students can scan to report outages.
To support Sexual Assault Awareness Month, SGA held and helped fund several events to raise awareness and support survivors. One of these was a lantern-painting night, where students and survivors could come together, paint lanterns and show their support. The lanterns were then hung up at different events throughout the month.
SGA also gave funding to the “What Were You Wearing” exhibition. This exhibit showed the clothes survivors were wearing when they were assaulted to challenge the idea that clothing causes assault.
Along with these events, SGA donated funding to the Take Back the Night event. This event gave survivors and supporters a space to speak out against sexual violence and stand together as a community.
Transportation: Somewhat complete
What was initially said: Large and Poole wanted buses for special events to make parking easy and safe and to push event attendance for students. They also wanted more commuter lot parking for students to reduce the burden and limit parking, have easier signage for parking so there is less confusion and have the hours of parking listed on the signs, too.
What Happened: Poole reiterated that one of the biggest concerns he heard from students was “accessing different events on campus.” So they worked with Transportation Services and several other groups involved in the events to plan the routes, times and best ways to do this. Some of the events that they had buses for were the Dance Marathon and football games.
Large said the university was “not necessarily the most willing” to expand the commuter lots.
“We were communicating with Transportation and Parking Services, and they are going to be looking over the summer at reevaluating different sections of campus to see if there are any spaces that they can change for commuter parking, to make it more accessible to students,” she said.
Parking signage is being worked on during the summer. Poole explained that they set aside some money in the SGA’s budget for it. The signs are currently being installed, and students can expect to see them next year when they return to campus.
“We're working with them to put up new signs in certain areas and refurbish existing signs,” Large said.
Treasurer Casey Rockel took charge of this project, but he never responded with the exact locations where the new signs would be seen.
Campus Life: Somewhat complete
What was initially said: Poole and Large also wanted to improve dining on campus by offering more options for those with allergies and improving the signage for price transparency. They also wanted to increase the green spaces on campus by providing benches and tables for students and, finally, “Stall Talk” so students could learn about campus events.
What Happened: Large said the dining halls expanded their food selections, particularly in the Atrium, where the Rotating Kitchen introduced a wider variety of choices. The Atrium also now offers both reusable and disposable containers and has made the pricing of the food clearer.
The green spaces on campus will be finished in the summer. To achieve this, SGA worked with Facilities Planning and Management, but mostly with Secretary for the Environment Nathan Ritz.
“We're going to be getting more benches and picnic posts placed in different locations across campus this summer,” Large said.
Lastly, Poole and Large aimed to implement “Stall Talk” as part of their campus life platform point. Poole visited Indiana University Indianapolis and discovered the initiative, which is a student newsletter that was updated monthly. He thought it would be great for students on Ball State’s campus, as well.
“We have so many events, so many student organizations, so many opportunities for students, and sometimes it’s easy to lose track of them,” Poole said.
The executive board thought this would benefit students because of the transparency, communication and overall student experience.
This did get approved, and it is being piloted in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center. Poole said students should “hopefully see this next year.”
However, SGA faces one issue when trying to involve the student organizations and obtain the materials to hang them on the doors from Facilities Planning and Management
Contact Shelby Anderson via email at sanderson9@bsu.edu.
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