Hey Dartmouth,
For the past week, I've been communicating with you in a variety of ways to present my platform. I've spoken to you about fiscal policy, committees and Assembly structure, and social issues on campus. These issues are critical and are what motivated me to run in the first place. However, today I'd like to address you as your fellow student, not as a candidate. I want to talk to you about something that I know all Dartmouth students understand and care about: dedication.
Before I declared a major, studied abroad, joined a house and became involved in other campus organizations, I was elected to be a freshman representative for Student Assembly. From that day forward, the Assembly has been my number-one priority. As an Executive member of the Assembly for the past two years, I have learned how to communicate with the administration, become adept at handling the intricacies of budgeting and tackled issues that have faced the student body. I've made bettering your time at Dartmouth my greatest ambition, and I am prepared to take my role in the Assembly to the next level.
But if there is one thing that I've learned in my time in the Assembly, it is that the Assembly is only effective if it engages with the student community. Your input is the sole means of achieving the goals of this platform. I also know that the best way to get your input and earn your trust is for the Assembly to come to you. I don't think dialogue is a lofty goal. I don't think I'm being too idealistic. Dartmouth students have ideas, passions and grievances that the Assembly should make their priority, and the Assembly will only gain that knowledge if it comes to your spaces and organizations.
Ultimately, the Assembly's concerns with fiscal policy and social issues would be impossible to implement without a strong leader. As such, my focus is how to turn philosophy into action. My aim is to illustrate that concepts viewed as fairly abstract can be rooted in reality. The ideology is plain and simple: the campus's agenda is the Assembly's agenda. To establish Dartmouth students' guiding principles, the Assembly needs to initiate a neutral dialogue. And once we've had these discussions, we need to take this momentum a step further and turn our theories into action. That's where the Assembly has the power to step in on the campus's behalf. If you take anything from this statement, remember this: under my model, the Assembly will not only initiate the conversations about issues facing this campus, but it will also attempt to solve them through our strengthened student community.
