Though they are running largely unopposed, Next Generation is making some serious campaign promises, including a 10-point plan for their first 30 days in office.
The plan aims at making Student Government (SG) more accessible to students and more helpful to RSOs, presidential candidate and third-year Greg Nance told the Maroon in an interview, by holding regular office hours in the C-Shop and purchasing three used vans to be rented by RSOs.
“We’re trying to create a lot of momentum on each of these projects,” Nance said. “Patrick, David, and I are committed to making each of these happen to the best of our abilities within the 30-day timeframe.”
The slate—in which second-year David Chen is running for vice president of Administration and first-year Patrick Ip for vice president of Student Affairs—has also identified longer-term goals that range from the practical (more electrical outlets in Hutch, limiting the number of warning bells at closing time in the Reg) to the more broad (helping reform Advanced Residency tuition for graduate students, improving campus walkability through discussions with University-employed contractors). Nance conceded that some larger issues will take longer than Next Generation’s time in office, due to the complexity of a bureaucratic university, but said the slate would initiate SG involvement.
Many of Next Generation’s campaign pledges involve technological advancements, like creating an online sports calendar and adding attendance and voting records to the SG Web site, on which it hopes to improve traffic. To accomplish this, the slate said it would bring in first-year Cyrus Eslami as technology specialist. Eslami is running for vice president of Student Affairs for Delta Upsilon’s (DU) Moose Party; Nance is also a DU brother.
“David, Patrick, and I have our own strengths ,but technology isn’t one of them,” Nance said. “So Cyrus is going to be sort of the right-hand man on a couple of these projects.”
Nance said other individuals, mainly from SG but not acting in their SG capacities, would be asked to work through Next Generation on individual projects.
“A lot of projects, if you place them at the top and all 17 of us [in College Council] are going to work on it—it can be very, very slow. You’re basically throwing it to a bureaucracy and watching it slowly turn through,” Nance said.
Projects undertaken individually, he said, are often more successful. Nance used the restaurant discount program, a fall-quarter project by second-year College Council representative Chen Kuan, as an example. “They basically just hustled for three weekends and came back with 14 restaurants that want to give us discounts.”
The slate told the Maroon that none of the initial projects in the 10-point plan would require SG approval.
Its three candidates all have leadership and SG experience: Nance and Chen founded MoneyThink, a group that teaches financial responsibility to high school students, and
Ip is the national director of Rethink Learning Now, a campaign for holistic education reform. Nance won a Truman Scholarship this month (awarded for leadership potential) and is the current undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees. All three serve or have served on College Council.
