Strong Student Association executives can refocus the University, improve student life and provide the student body with more ways to be a lifelong Colonial.
Strong executives can help facilitate changes as vast as Gelman Library grants and the elimination of the University Counseling Center fee.
That said, SA executives aren’t alchemists or lawmakers. They are advocates for the student body, sometimes shouting at an unresponsive administration.
So the scrutiny we give the SA president and executive vice president is certainly one that needs to begin with that understanding. But holding the executives accountable despite their limitations is the job of an engaged and informed student body.
Student Association President–elect Ashwin Narla and Executive Vice President-elect Abby Bergren: You are both involved students with successful histories of student leadership. But even the most ambitious and well-prepared SA executives have sparked controversy and drawn ire from failing to execute a few fundamental tasks.
To avoid this, pledge to uphold a three-part contract with the student body.
It begins with communication. Narla and Bergren have both pointed to outreach – be it through personal or student organization interactions – as their principal objective for next year, so hopefully this objective will remain a priority all year. But I can’t stress this enough: An SA executive who effects great change, but who fails to share those improvements, will ultimately be perceived as an SA executive who didn’t do much at all.
And beyond communicating with the student body about your undertakings, invite the community to better understand the advocacy process as a whole. Share insights about the obstacles the University faces in carrying out a student life goal. Reference administrators who are dragging their feet on important issues raised. Talk about when an issue arises that requires you to change course. Share your efforts with the student body and it will support your endeavors.
Next, don’t just be a lobbyist – be a leader. Student Association executives are too often so focused on their issues that they retreat and fail to be faces for the student body. As president and executive vice president, you do not only represent the student body to the administration when it comes time to advocate for an issue; your attitude and presence set the tone to the outside world about what it means to be a Colonial.
But most of all, you must come together to create a central theme or vision that will define your year in office. While new situations may change your focus or derail an endeavor, maintain a central mantra for your term.
Bergren spoke frequently during her endorsement hearing about outlining goal completion through action items. Narla is adamant about calling upon the excitement and fervor of the entire student body to make change.
Where these two themes come together could be the perfect combination of a broad-strokes platform pegged by tangible goals.
Instituting a panoramic vision that can be satisfied through small, realistic goals is the key task to approaching the year ahead.
And to that end, our task as students is to see that the SA executives maintain this contract with us.
Carry out these three tenets, and you’ll have a year where your advocacy effects change today, and its reverberations will be felt for years beyond that.
Annu Subramanian, a junior majoring in journalism, is The Hatchet’s opinions editor.
