Britney Deas plans to add a full-service kitchen for student organizations to use among other initiatives. ORACLE PHOTO/LEDA ALVIM

Once elected, Britney Deas will be the first African-American female student body president to take office.

However, before she gets there she has a detailed plan for what she hopes to accomplish during her term.

Deas and running mate Travis McCloskey are building their platform — based on success, health, innovation, finance and tradition — to create a “BULL S.H.I.F.T.”

Deas said traditionalists may not think that it’s an appropriate slogan, however, she wanted to take the risk so that students could be attracted to the campaign.

“We figured we could have a catchy slogan with some serious initiatives,” Deas said.

Entering into Student Government’s (SG) 60th term, Deas said she wants to sit down with the previous administration to review previous initiatives that were funded but not accomplished, such as the prospective Esports Arena and representation for the National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC).

Parking trackers in the parking garages were supposed to be implemented in fall 2018, based on comments originally made by current Student Body President Moneer Kheireddine. The initiative has now been incorporated in Deas’ platform objectives.

To avoid the project from remaining uncompleted for another term, Deas said she is going to talk to administration to come up with a compromise to the situation.

“You have to step back and reevaluate an initiative that is not going to be finished during your term and focus on ones that you can accomplish,” Deas said. “You can’t just make initiatives for your own term, you need to make initiatives to build on for five years, 10 years, 20 years down the line.”

In an attempt to build more inclusivity on campus, Deas is using Homecoming Week as a first step.

“I think USF is lacking in Homecoming spirit, and that’s an area where we’ll need to improve and maybe bring back some high school traditions to get students more engaged,” Deas said.

Deas said she wanted to create an interactive section on the SG website to update students on initiatives. The current SG website does not have a feature that shows which initiatives have already been completed or are being worked on.

The website, according to Deas, will be designed in a way so that you see the arrow hits the bullseye whenever something is completed, “almost like a check mark.”

“One of the biggest issues with SG is that students don’t know what we do, so in order to alleviate student concerns, we have to make them more aware of what we’re doing to help them and make sure that they’re having the best experience possible.”

The responsibilities between Deas and McCloskey will be equally distributed throughout the term. Although the initiatives will be shared, Deas said McCloskey will have more involvement with the A&S Recommendation Committee (ASRC), which handles allocating funding to student organizations and department.

“He loves finance, he’s Mr. Money man,” Deas said.

McCloskey could not be reached for comment by the time of publication Wednesday night.

One of the initiatives Deas said will take time to finish involves building a kitchen for cultural organizations on campus, as well as larger meeting and storage spaces. She said she is unsure if this would be an expansion of the Marshall Student Center (MSC) or an all-purpose auditorium.

“Most clubs don’t want to be catered by Aramark and want to be able to make their own foods,” Deas said. “It would be a lot of work for them to make it from home and bring it to campus.”

Students can vote for candidates running for SG on Feb. 25-28 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. outside the MSC and various locations posted on the SG website.

Deas said her platform is unique in the fact that she chose initiatives that are obtainable.

One of Deas’ simplistic initiatives will provide students with the opportunity of having professional headshots taken for LinkedIn or Facebook. She said this is something that could be done for free with the use of the marketing team in SG.

“We’re not trying to attract students attention in order to get votes, knowing deep down inside that it wouldn’t be realistic,” Deas said. “We actually put things on our platform that we could see through with the time given.

“I think it’s a wholesome platform.”