This year, there is only one registered candidate for the position of director of diversity efforts: sophomore Tyson Johnston. Johnston is the current director of diversity efforts and is now running for a second term.

“There’s only so much you can do with a year; I had to have it again,” Johnston said.

As the title implies, the director of diversity efforts is granted the broadly defined responsibility of encouraging diversity through the ASUW.

As director of diversity efforts, Johnston has been responsible for stimulating dialogue and diversity awareness through ASUW.

“A lot falls under my position,” he said. “It’s my job to make sure that people are talking about things that aren’t talked about.”

In the past year, Johnston said, he has made an effort to be involved in the ASUW Student Senate, the body responsible for officially formulating student opinion and the ASUW policy. In addition to participating and involving the diversity commissions with the senate, Johnston is proud of his work in the creation of a functional Office of Minority Affairs Student Advisory Board. He also worked closely with fledgling Student Disability Commission and the College of Arts and Sciences in attempts to recruit and retain professors and faculty of diverse backgrounds.

Next year, Johnston hopes to work on including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues in the UW’s discrimination policy, address the lack of policy when negotiating with other universities with racially offensive mascots, make access to the UW Web site accesible to the visually impaired and address the lack of recognition of the Duwamish tribe, whose land, Johnston said, we occupy every day.

The Duwamish tribe is federally unrecognized as an individual group and can be a topic of contention in administrative circles.

“As a queer person and person of color, I’m working also for myself,” Johnston said. “I’m tied to the communities I want to represent.”

Johnston grew up on the coastal Quinault Indian Reservation in Taholah, Wash. From a high school class of 17, he is the only one in college and off the reservation. He is also active in First Nations @ UW and the Queer People of Color Alliance, among other organizations. He is double majoring in communications and American Indian studies.

If elected, Johnston, along with other candidates on the Our Campus ticket, will pursue resolving the fact that the Ethnic Cultural Center has been in temporary facilities for the past 20 years — an issue that until this year has seen little to no discussion. Other issues important to the candidates include a lack of resources and advocacy for student-parents as well as for widespread gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

“All the things I want to do are closely tied to the things that other people [on the Our Campus ticket] want to do,” Johnston said.

Reach reporter Kass Bessert at news@thedaily.washington.edu.