Student Government Association president, Cade Tremain, is graduating this semester. He said he would sum up his two terms as SGA president into one word— growth. Tremain said he has evolved into a more mindful and detail-oriented person. 

  “I’ve grown in those main aspects of being much more aware of what’s around me, being more considerate of others but also myself at the same time,” Tremain said. “Whenever I say that, I mean trying my best to put myself in someone else’s shoes but also at the same time understanding that you do need to think for yourself. You should never let someone think for you.”

  Tremain said he first got involved in politics while in high school. He said his peers lacked interest in student government and his school’s district placed more of a focus on sports than it did on leadership. Tremain said those were the driving forces that led him to take on the role of student body president. He said he loved being president so much that he knew he wanted his college career to center around politics in some way.

  “Whenever I took a campus visit I initially was looking into communications and then I started thinking political communications would be cool and then I thought about political science as a whole,” Tremain said. “So, my emphasis with political science is the American government overall so I’ve taken a lot of classes with that and I’ve fallen in love with it honestly.”

  When Tremain joined SGA, he started as a senator, then he became chairman of the public relations committee, next he took on the secretary position and finally served as president for two terms. He said working as former SGA president, Justin Cobb’s secretary is when he began envisioning himself as SGA president.

   “I was on his exec [executive] board as his secretary and when you’re the secretary you’re working very close with the president so there is some overlap there,” Tremain said. “You know a lot of what they do but you don’t know it all by any means. I was thinking that this is something that I might be able to do.”

  Tremain said he mentioned possibly running for SGA president to a few others in student government and they responded with an abundance of support. Tremain said that support pushed him to go through with it. He ran and won the election.

   He said one of the biggest challenges he has faced as president was breaking down the belief that only those who major in political science can be or should be involved with SGA.

  “That would be the biggest uphill battle probably is finding people who are really interested in student government that typically wouldn’t be exposed to it otherwise and making sure that they’re in it for the right reasons too,” Tremain said. “A lot of times people our age will sign up for something just to see it as a resume booster and that’s not what student government is. It really undercuts student government, in my opinion, when people just see it as a way to fill white space on a page.”

  This is why Tremain said his favorite part of his job is watching a meeting about parliamentary procedure flow perfectly.

“That’s the coolest thing because usually whenever you join student government you know nothing of parliamentary procedure,” Tremain said. “People pick it up as they go and that’s kind of nice because I really feel like they are learning something out of student government and they are getting something out of it and they’re using it to their advantage too.”

  While Tremain felt recruiting for SGA was challenging, the advisor for SGA, Shari Bax, said it was something he managed to accomplish.

  “He put a lot of effort into growing the student government association both in members and also in diversity of membership,” Bax said. “He really tried to make sure we were getting a lot of different voices and that he was listening to those different voices.

  Congresswoman for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and cochair for the sustainability committee, Hadley Oden, said, she believes Tremain’s greatest contribution to UCM centered around her committee.

  “He had made this committee, the sustainability committee, which is new this year,” Oden said. “Their goal was then to bring recycling back to UCM just to promote a greener campus.”

  Tremain who described SGA as his child said he is sad to be leaving his post as president but he also feels contented knowing he is leaving it in good hands. Tremain said he hopes that after graduation, he will get his dream job working as an advocate for education.