Five students are running to be the Associated Students President for next year. The president chairs the board of directors, serves as a representative in the Academic Senate and oversees policies, including budgets and committees.
Jeanine Davis sees a disconnect on campus that could be fixed.
Landon Hendricks sees the connection between different clubs and organizations as his biggest concern.
Ajmaj Khan feels like Chico’s image of diversity isn’t properly represented and he wants to change that.
Yi Li said the biggest issues were cleanliness of facilities, pricing and service, specifically at sports events.
Beatrix Teaney wants to focus on community building, transparency and shared governance.
Jeanine Davis
Davis said she feels the biggest problem is a division across campus as a whole.
“During my conversations, most of the people feel disconnected,” she said. “They feel like there are major clubs or organizations that get all of the attention, all the funding, and there’s a lot of little ones that don’t, like, they don’t feel seen.”
She wants to have a “unity day,” a space where different student clubs and organizations can come together to have conversations with one another to build unity.
“I see when we have these fairs, and we have these programs, these community events, each club is competing to get that number,” Davis said. “I want to create a day where we can just be human . . . let’s get to know each other.”
One of the biggest issues she has noticed is students graduating without entering the job market soon after graduation. She feels as if there is a detachment in getting information out about the available certifications and programs the university offers.
“I believe there’s a disconnect with that and all with the business schools, because we have certifications that you can get for free,” she said. “But apparently, there’s a disconnect getting that information out.”
To fix this, she wants to do word-of-mouth campaigning, such as making it a requirement that information is shared in all classrooms at the beginning of each semester. As well as requiring all AS community centers to post it and share the information verbally three times a semester.
She feels as if her biggest challenge is balancing when to stand firm and when to compromise if she were to become president.
She is majoring in international relations. After graduation, she wants to do cross-border business and education.
“I think my key point is, the future of Chico State would be the future of how we envision it,” she said. “And I vision it as a place of unity, a oneness.”
Landon Hendricks
Hendricks is running for president because he wants to “build up” the College of Agriculture by bridging connections between clubs and different student organizations.
“I feel like the biggest issue is how do we connect students in different environments that they’re maybe uncomfortable with?” he said. “How do we combine communities, bring people together, and host events where people can collaborate in places where they never thought they would?”
Hendricks plans on bridging the gap between different clubs and organizations by utilizing CatsConnect and social media, by reaching out to clubs with similar values and having them come together.
“I think Greek life does a great job. A lot of the time, their pillars, their values, within their fraternity or sorority align,” he said. “So they will collaborate and do activities together. That is a good example of what that can look like and I think we could do that for a lot of the clubs and organizations here on campus.”
Hendricks took a gap year to serve as a California Future Farmers of America state officer.
He has chaired the Chico State FFA Field, where high school and middle school students from all over California competed in a variety of Career Development events, along with an award ceremony.
Hendricks is currently the ICC representative for the dairy science and industry club and a Bell scholar, one of the College of Agriculture’s full-ride scholarships.
He once guided a group of agriculture students on a trip to Puerto Rico, which he described as an experience that allowed students to “be able to indulge in a very different culture.”
Hendricks feels one of his biggest challenges is that he hasn’t been part of AS before.
“I think stepping into this role, I would require some training,” Hendricks said. “But I think something that was instilled in me a long time ago is that you can always teach talent. You could always build that up, but you can’t train a good person. And at the end of the day, I do believe I’m a good person and a good fit for this position.”
Hendricks is a junior majoring in agriculture science and education. After graduating, he plans to enroll in a student credential program and become a high school teacher.
Ajmal Khan
Khan says his campaign centers on one simple idea. Students can’t benefit if they don’t know what’s happening on campus.
Khan, a transfer student from Cal Poly Humboldt, said one of the biggest problems he sees at the university is the lack of student awareness about campus resources, events and even student government itself.
“My first semester, I didn’t know what AS was,” Khan said. “How are you gonna pride on being a $23 million company, a business company, and not, you know, have your students know about it?”
Khan decided to run this year after learning more about AS and campus elections and after feeling like the university’s image as a diverse campus wasn’t fully reflected.
“I looked at a lot of their clubs and a lot of their student life, and they prided on diversity so much,” Khan said. “I haven’t seen a lick of that diversity.”
As a political science student, Khan said his politics have been a big part of his life. He said he came from a political family and that his father was a local politician in Pakistan.
At the university, he said his biggest involvement has been part of a Muslim student community, the Muslim Students Association, where he has helped organize gatherings and Ramadan activities.
“We don’t have an official club, which I’m going to push for when I win or if I get into office,” Khan said regarding the MSA.
Through his community, he said he’s grateful. He said it’s helped him be more confident and take initiative in gathering people.
Khan emphasizes the importance of having more diversity, especially halal for Muslim students.
“None of my Muslim friends can eat in the cafeteria,” Khan said. “The freshman Muslim students have to have a meal plan. How does that work?”
He said he wants to push for more halal options in the dining hall and more diverse food options overall. He also said he would like to see more food trucks on campus.
Khan said that AS should do more to promote their events and reach beyond social media.
“We gotta get rid of that culture of one source of media, one source of information being spread,” Khan said.
He claims the only time students know what’s going on is if they are following the right Instagram accounts, leaving a disconnect between students and campus events.
“I want to bridge that gap between students and planned activities,” Khan said.
Though Khan hasn’t been part of Associated Students, he said being new would bring a fresh perspective.
He said that one of the biggest challenges will be trying to keep his campaign promises.
“My biggest challenge definitely is gonna be working with the board,” Khan said. He is worried about “becoming puppets.”
He encourages everyone to vote in this election, regardless of who you support.
“Go out and vote, even though if it’s not for me,” Khan said. “Go out and vote. It matters.”
Yi Li
Li has lived in Chico for eight years. He came to Chico from Texas in search of a more diverse community and a place to pursue his academic and athletic goals.
Li didn’t initially plan to run for president this year. He said the repeated election advertisements caught his attention.
He decided to run this year because he feels there are many things that could be better — specifically regarding campus facilities and concessions at sporting events.
“There were a lot of things that I would see in the facilities that I knew specifically were run by the AS that I feel could be a lot better,” he said. “I would just see a lot of things that I would feel this could be way better as a student.”
Li said the biggest issues were cleanliness, pricing and service, which stood out the most at sports events.
“It was a time that I wanna go buy something,” Li said. “I think it was maybe like the basketball game … and it was closed.”
He said the combination of early closures of concessions at sporting events and expensive food could drive people away from buying things on campus.
“I would just like walk to the Safeway or walk to the Walgreens and buy my drinks,” Li said. “That’s all money that if they had put like a better price, they could just keep making the money.”
He feels as if lots of services are often neglected on campus. He used empty hand sanitizer dispensers at the WREC, which he described as little things that were neglected.
“At the end of the day, even if I don’t win, I still want to put forth that effort and make that option available to let people know we’re still trying to make that effort,” Li said. “To let people know that there’s people that see the facilities, see how everything is run and we feel that we can put forth a better effort.
Li is a senior majoring in kinesiology. Outside of school, soccer is his passion. He plans to use his degree to become a soccer coach.
Beatrix Teaney
Teaney is currently the Executive Vice President of AS. Her campaign is focused on community building, transparency and shared governance.
“My focus, if I’m talking specifically government affairs, is on transparency and barriers to shared governance,” Teaney said.
She came to Chico after living in Los Angeles and completing her associate’s degree at Los Angeles Valley College. She said she transferred to the university because the anthropology program appealed to her.
Teaney was president of the Anthropological Society from 2024 to 2025 and currently serves as the treasurer. She also runs the CoolCat Closet and she works at Student Life and Leadership as involvement coordinator. Previously, she worked in the philosophy department and has been involved in other projects and organizations, including creating a documentary through the Anthropology Department.
She decided to run this year because she feels like her work in AS isn’t finished. She said there are problems she has noticed as executive vice president that she wants to continue addressing.
“There’s a lot of things that I’ve foreseen or that I’ve seen throughout my position,” Teaney said.
She said students often do not know what government affairs are, what is being discussed or how decisions are made — and she wants students to be more involved.
“A lot of students are unaware of what government affairs officials really do,” she said. “We’re student-elected, but we’re elected by about 17% of the school population.”
Teaney plans to engage students more in academic affairs by holding town halls, but she said they should be changed so that students have more input than the administration.
“I think that the town hall should be majority student input, student questions,” she said. “It should be, like, an overall campus turnout.”
One of the policies Teaney believes isn’t properly communicated well is the Student Organization Event Allocation Fund (SOEAF) and that some clubs know how to use it better than others.
The SOEAF is the student event allocation fund that is provided to clubs for special events, she said.
She said there are student clubs that know about that policy that borderline abuse the policy because they utilize it more than other students.
“There’s a pool of $50,000 available through the academic year, but it’s first-come, first-served,” Teaney said. “There should be an overall cap on how much your one club could spend.”
AS Councils struggle to meet quorum and she wants to find a way to have students participate — she thinks giving students an incentive to come to these meetings would help students be more engaged.
“We’ve only had two to three meet quorum throughout the entire academic year,” Teaney said. “We should be looking and working across the campus with colleges to see what certificates are offered, what pathways are offered, that require internship hours.”
Teaney is a senior majoring in cultural anthropology. After graduation, she plans to do a master’s program. She will be a first-generation college student in her family.
On Wednesday, every Chico State student will receive an email with a link to the ballot. The link will also be available here on its website. You will need to sign in with your Chico State login to access the ballot.
Aiden Masson can be reached at [email protected]
