With campaigns for the Associated Students of Colorado State University elections for the 2024-25 academic year fully underway, The Collegian sat down with presidential candidate Jakye Nunley and vice presidential candidate Joseph Godshall to discuss their backgrounds, campaign platforms and future plans.

Initially facing two other candidates that dropped out on March 31 and April 1, Nunley and Godshall emerged as the uncontested candidates for the 2025-26 year.

Nunley is a sophomore studying business administration and currently serves as the ASCSU chief of staff. Godshall is a junior studying political science and business and currently serves as the ASCSU director of public relations.

ASCSU election voting is open April 7-9.

Background, ASCSU experience, qualifications

Nunley:  Stumbling upon ASCSU at the collegiate level, it was much different than how I experienced leadership in high school. Working in ASCSU, I’ve learned so much. I joined ASCSU as the deputy director of health, and I got to work under Jorja Whyte. One of the things that Jorja taught me was how to go so hard in ASCSU. Being a deputy director, you kind of adapted to the pace of your director, and my director was incredible. She was tenacious, and she worked hard. … What it showed me was the standard of what it meant to work in ASCSU and facilitate that space.

As far as qualifications go, I could read you a long list of resume items or talking points that I would have for an interview. But instead, I’ll leave it with the quality of leadership itself, which is something that I’m forever indebted to and a leadership philosophy that I hold true to, that is well-massaged, well-oiled and well-cared for.

Godshall: My background is heavily based in ASCSU; I’ve seen the organization change. The first day that I stepped into ASCSU was the first day that I transferred onto this campus. … It was my first time ever walking onto campus, my first time ever seeing inside the student center, my first time inside the senate chambers.

I worked as a senator for an entire year, and then I switched to the executive branch as the deputy director of DEI. This year I currently work as the director of public relations for ASCSU. I’ve seen the organization through many different eras and many different changes, and I think that I can pinpoint the areas where we need to grow and where we need to really focus our energy on.

I’m very heavily involved in campus life. I’ve been on the executive board of four different organizations since my time at CSU started, and those organizations represent a variety of different people, and I think that that experience has really helped me in growing a passion for advocating for students, especially when it comes to affordability and transparency among the university and then advocacy for the priorities of students to the administration.

Campaign platform, campus issues, priorities

Nunley: Our platform initiatives are centered around this idea of a unified CSU, a cohesive CSU and, ideally, a CSU that looks whole for students, by students. I think that’s what makes our campaign so magical. … We approached all of our policies, we approached the way that we thought about who should be on this team, we approached the way that we wrote the job descriptions for next year with this radical student framework. … What I want to highlight is that it’s radical. It’s for students, by students, and it’s cohesive.

It’s integral for ASCSU to fight for affordability for students. We plan on attacking affordability not only by advocating at the state level and continuing contact with lobbyists, but in addition to that, we plan on starting conversations at this university about raising the wages that students get. We do realize that some of the work and the fruition of that work may not come to pass while we are in office, but if we can set the framework and the groundwork for what happens with student wage models this year, that’s what leadership is about.

Godshall: We established that one of the needs for campus was de-siloing the student experience and making sure that we weren’t just tailoring toward certain groups of people based off of what the time period is or what the season is.

ASCSU is supposed to be representing all students on campus at all times, and a cohesive CSU centers around students, and students center around ASCSU, so (we’re) really making sure that ASCSU returns to its roots of student service through the acts and the policies and the platform points that we’ve put together. I think it’ll really exemplify what our plan to transform campus is when you see the way that ASCSU is transformed through our administration.

ASCSU/student relationship, ASCSU future goals

Nunley: I love the quote, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” As it relates to student government, if students don’t know, it’s because we haven’t told them and we haven’t made the outreach efforts.

We outreach to different student groups during election cycles and campaign seasons, and then they don’t hear from us until the next administration is ready to come through and do that. A part of our platform initiative is this idea of the campus leader series. It’s this idea of keeping people connected throughout the whole year, and not only (through) relationship building but skill building for students.

There is no ASCSU without students. The two are synonymous. One is not independent of the other. We are a ticket that realizes that there is no ASCSU without the function, the touch point, the framework being rooted in students.

Godshall: There are some people that, when I say ASCSU, they have tons of opinions, but there are some people that don’t even know what we do. The normal, average, everyday students might not know anything about us, but they know that they’re paying money to us, and I think we really want to break that down and make sure that we’re representing the people who are attending this university.

We want to be known as the premier organization on campus to go to when you have an issue and you have a problem and you need to feel represented, and I think that that’s currently not being done well — not because of the organization itself but just because of the stigma surrounding it.

We’re hoping to really be there for our constituents so that they can begin to trust us when they begin to know us. From the day that we take office, (we hope) that we are representing every student and that they feel represented. And if they don’t know about us, that’s our fault, not theirs.

Reach Laila Shekarchian at news@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.