I am running for Assembly president because my time away has helped me gain a better understanding of why I left it in the first place and what steps we can take to improve the current situation. Student Assembly retention is integral to its legitimacy as a governing organization. If elected Assembly president, I would pay attention to the needs of my committee chairs and Student Assembly members. Rather than expect Student Assembly members to come up with their own projects to spearhead, I would focus on the Assembly as a body that connects with various parts of campus. For example, the Academic Affairs Committee would be improved through working more closely with the Tutor Clearinghouse and the undergraduate deans. Students working on social spaces should be in touch with governing organizations involved with social events like Collis Governing Board, Programming Board and the Council on Student Organizations. While Assembly members would be welcome to come up with their own projects to work on, ultimately the role of Student Assembly is to represent students. We have students with opinions; the Assembly needs to work harder to make them heard.
In the last two years, I have continued to be involved in student governance as a representative of the Council on Student Organizations and have helped allocate student activities fees while on the Undergraduate Finance Committee. These experiences have helped me focus on the Assembly's role on campus. The Assembly's responsibility to students is two-pronged, first in advocacy of College policy and engagement with senior administrators and second in the provision of key services to students. Within advocacy, the Assembly should work with other campus leadership organizations to examine Dick's House and the improvement of counseling services, help students continue the improvement of Dartmouth Dining Services for example, by bringing back Topside dollars or allowing rollover of DDS flex spending and make sure that the student voice is heard regarding new College policies and the potential presidential search. On the services side, the Assembly can encourage reviews on CourseRank to make them more useful for students, supply more laptop chargers to the libraries, formalize better peer-to-peer advising, work to rollover GreenPrint funds and bring back "Dean's funding" for student-driven social initiatives.
If elected Assembly president, my biggest goal would be to strengthen the student voice and increase meaningful dialogue with administrators. We need to know why the College is losing key staff and what actions, if any, College administrators are taking to improve student and staff support services. College administrators need to know about the student views and act on them. I am willing to spend as much time as needed in meetings and at Parkhurst if it means that I can give an answer back to you. Current Assembly leaders talk to administrators on a regular basis, yet for the most part the discussion is not brought back to the student body. I plan to change that. As Student Assembly president I would make sure that the conversation flow happens both ways; student voice will be represented to the administration, and their views will be relayed back to students. This is especially important because at the end of the day, most of my power will come from my having the student body behind me.
To my fellow Dartmouth students: Please vote on Monday. Let us turn around the current direction of the Assembly and make it relevant and accountable. Let us make it a body that we are passionate about once again.
