After exploring the many different facets of Dartmouth as a student and learning about our College's key strengths and weaknesses, I feel that I am in a unique position to offer solutions and a fresh perspective to Student Assembly as vice president. Especially after this year, I firmly believe that everyone on this campus wants to move in a direction that cements the changes we seek, pushes us to better opportunities in the future, and gives us the chance to flourish in our goals and ambitions. It is time that we squarely address the hindrances and frustrations we find in Student Assembly.
First, instead of creating new committees and task forces within Student Assembly, we need to harness the strengths within existing student organizations on campus through Student Assembly. There are many organizations on campus that already represent key communities and issues. We have the Inter-Community Council, the Inter-Fraternity Council, Sexual Abuse Peer Advisors, Mentors Against Violence, Gay Straight Alliance and countless other groups that make an impact on campus and would be able to consult Student Assembly on issues that affect our community as a whole. Why can't we use Student Assembly to enable these groups to work together towards a common goal? Many complain that Student Assembly does not represent the interests of the student body. This is one way we can directly address this issue. We can empower the student body through Student Assembly. This will simultaneously strengthen and legitimize Student Assembly as an organization that bridges communities together and accomplishes key tasks.
Second, we need to follow through on many of the problems and issues that students have spoken about. We need to be consistent with our programs, action and support for students. Let us not go through another year in which members of our community feel ostracized. Furthermore, financial aid is an issue that affects a great percentage of campus. International students have been pushing for need-blind aid, and Student Assembly should continue to support this effort. We also cannot let the Dartmouth mascot issue and SEMP policies go unaddressed next year without some kind of movement forward. These problems have existed for quite some time and have been discussed extensively but little progress has been made.
We need to build bridges and link the seemingly disparate elements of campus together to find solutions to the problems we face. This is not impossible. It has been done in the past, and there is no reason why Student Assembly cannot do this in the future.
