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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Parrill works to bring change to Union Board

Union Board President Lexy Parrill didn’t realize the extent of what needed to change on the board until she received backlash after the announcement of this year’s Little 500 concert performer, she said.

Parrill said many IU students do not understand what Union Board does, both with the organization’s programming and acting as the governing body of the Indiana Memorial Union.

Parrill received emails from people saying, “Union Board, you have one job.”
She said although the organization has a part in making people think that, it’s not the case.

“I think really creating better awareness of what Union Board does is important because, in actuality, we don’t have just one job,” Parrill said. “In the next semester, I want to really make sure students know what Union Board does and know how their student fee dollars are being used.”

Parrill, a junior majoring in history, was elected president of Union Board after being involved in the organization for two years. She joined her second semester at IU.

As a freshman, Parrill said, she was miserable. There were a lot of things going on at the time that she didn’t agree with or like.

“I was so unhappy at IU, and I could choose to leave, or I could choose to stay, and I could be the change,” Parrill said. “I could change the things I was so unhappy about or run away, and the same issues would be affecting the students.”

Parrill served two semesters as an assistant director on the service committee. She decided she wanted to get more involved and spent all of 2013 as the Director of Service.

The board of directors then chose Parrill as the 2014 Union Board President.

“Lexy is super passionate about Union Board, and she is always more prepared than anyone else on the board,” Vice President of Marketing Paul Yoon said. “She runs our
meetings so it’s efficient and talks to individual directors each week to improve their
events.”

Parrill said being at the helm of the organization comes with a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but there’s also a lot she never knew before being on the executive board.

“As a director, you see very different problems than you see as the president,” Parrill said. “One of the things I really wanted to work on was making sure we were
programming more.”

As this is Union Board’s 105th anniversary, Parill said it was a goal to create 105 programs by the end of the year.

In addition to increasing the number of programs, she said she hopes to make those events relevant to a larger population of IU students.

“Our programming should be as diverse as all the students on this campus,” Parrill said. “That’s something that I know going into the next semester we’re going to be
working on.”

Union Board hopes to work closer with Bring Change 2 Mind in the fall, she said. Bring Change 2 Mind is an organization founded by Glenn Close that works to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness.

To Parrill, though, Union Board is more than an organization that creates events for students.

“One of the things I like most about being president is getting to work with the IMU staff,” she said. “That’s a huge part of Union Board. We’re not just programmers, we are also the governing body of the IMU.”

Union Board was established before the Indiana Memorial Union was built. The original goal of the organization was to unite the campus, and Parrill said she wants the same
thing to happen today.

Parrill said, more than anything, she hopes to see the Union become a place where every student can be comfortable at IU.

“I knew it was a place where the Union was my home,” she said. “It is a place where I love spending my time, and I wanted to make sure other students continued to feel
that way.”

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