UC Berkeley sophomore Liam Will announced his campaign for re-election as an ASUC Senate candidate March 12.

Will has been in office as an ASUC senator since fall 2019, with a focus on improving campus resources for students. According to Will’s platform guide, he has created and led a Basic Needs Fair with the Residence Hall Assembly, worked with the UC Berkeley Office of Emergency Management to install more hand sanitizer dispensers on campus and co-led a working group on making club funding and grants more accessible.

Will’s 2020 campaign focuses largely on furthering his work to improve student resources, with the intent to expand career resources and reduce the cost of academic resources, such as textbooks and course readers.

“I believe that Liam is still committed to his goals of ensuring that students at Cal have the basic resources they need in order to focus and succeed on what they’re really here for, which is pursuing school work and earning a degree,” said Cameron Deptula, Will’s chief of staff, in an email. “This boils down to focusing on food and housing security, expanding resources for students to search for affordable textbooks, as well as fostering student-administrator relationships in order to bolster these goals.”

Will’s platform also includes creating a model similar to UC Davis’ Inclusive Access program, which provides students with the option to receive e-textbooks after course registration.

Will added that this program is moderately feasible, but said in his platform guide that he would like to “use ASUC’s influence to get the ‘ball’ rolling” to finalize the project within a couple of years.

He also said he intends to reduce the cost of course readers by working with the academic affairs vice president, which Will notes as being a strongly feasible plan.

“I feel strongly about supporting him because I have seen first-hand the efforts and immense amount of time Liam has devoted to reaching out to everyone he possibly can about his missions and goals,” said campus alumna Jhinuk Barman in an email. “He truly wants to help people and does this through face-to-face conversations where he can use other student’s input to make the campus safer and easier to navigate.”

Will’s platform also addresses student housing insecurities, which he says he will dedicate himself to improving. He aims to have the campus reach a point at which it can guarantee housing to all first-year students.

Beyond his senate office, Will has held several other positions within the ASUC, including ASUC representative on the Student Union Operations Committee, director of student resources and spaces for the ASUC Office of the Academic Affairs Vice President and Basic Needs Coalition representative for former ASUC senator Anna Whitney, among others.

Within the current status COVID-19, colloquially known as the coronavirus, Will continues to campaign through social media and asks everyone to “prioritize staying safe and well.”