Hailing from Santa Clara, California and Honolulu, Hawaii, running mates Zak Cherif and Sebatian Kalilikane don’t take their experience at WSU for granted.

Both first-generation college students, their storytelling-oriented “Cougspective” platform focuses on the influence of the individual.

Cherif’s father came from Algeria and met Cherif’s mother in California. “He taught himself English and Spanish,” Cherif said, and his mother is a self-taught graphic deigner. “Running for something like this, it’s bigger than us,” he said.

Kalilikane said his path to WSU was new to his family, with more than 30 men in his family not leaving Oahu or attending college. He said he wants to increase celebrations of culture on campus and recognizes that compromise between different groups is the most efficient way to maximize student experience.

“We call it the year of the Coug,” said Kalilikane, “being the ticket that wants to go out and say to the administration, ‘this is what matters, and this is why.’”

The pair is focusing partly on student access to the governing body and increasing its services through some re-branding.

They want to highlight the reasons students enroll at WSU and the reasons they stay. By collecting testimony from students, vice-presidential candidate Kalilikane said, they can pinpoint and enhance aspects of the university not every student may know about.

Cherif, senior public relations major running for president, said if elected, their priorities would split into two categories: addressing issues on campus and more specifically, issues within ASWSU.

“We’ll put them both on the same level,” Cherif said, “campus priorities really speak to any issue that you can think of, or any issue you can’t think of yet. Whether that’s textbook prices or bad experiences with professors or advising.”

He said they plan on giving both an equal amount of attention during their time in office.

“There’s a lot of internal issues within ASWSU that we could probably spend days going over,” Cherif said.

Cherif, said his experience as Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) president has prepared him to fill the position. Current ASWSU Director of Communication, he said the politics are the hardest part and he is ready for the potential adversity.

He said a large issue facing ASWSU is lack of student engagement and knowledge.

Cherif said one aspect of the Cougspective campaign, which will become a fixture of their time in office should they be elected, is focusing on reaching individuals. He said it’s more prudent to worry about impacting students, relying as much as possible on the opportunities afforded by ASWSU through funding and programming.

Cherif said it’s much more important to impact individuals through projects like the Cougar Choice Housing Fair, which aimed to gather students and landlords in the area to lock in leases. After a poor turnout, Cherif said many of the housing authorities gathered were upset by a low student turnout.

If elected, he said he might consider using an ASWSU reserve of funding set up and secured for such programming. By hiring an outside consultant to market for the program, attracting more students and making the entire plan more efficient, the program would affect more people.

“Sebatian and I have sat down and gone over the current programs ASWSU has in place and thought about whether we’d like to keep them, re-vamp them, or get rid of them,” Cherif said.

The duo cited their experience in ASWSU together as the driver of their work ethics and friendship.