On Wednesday, the Maroon published an op-ed by a current USG cabinet member that criticized the New Generation Party in a way that fundamentally mischaracterizes our platform. Our goal is to tie UChicago’s vibrant community together and enhance employment opportunities so every student can pursue their dreams after graduating. Our execution plan is feasible and affordable. Allow me to set the record straight.
The op-ed argues that our proposed Career Support Committee is “fiscally irresponsible and unrealistic.” Far from it. Our plan is to build a committee that works in tandem with Career Advancement to bring more companies and researchers to campus, turning UChicago into a magnet for recruiters. The committee will work as follows: a student who has a connection with a company that Career Advancement does not yet work with can request that the committee organize an on-campus meet and greet. We will empower every single UChicago student to tap their personal network to help place our graduates in a wider array of fields and companies, creating new connections for Career Advancement that will benefit every current and future student.
The Career Support Committee will be inexpensive because we will start small. Like any startup, we will launch a minimum viable product. The first iteration of the committee will only have a budget of $15,000. This money will not come from RSO funding allocations, but directly from the cabinet’s discretionary budget. If the program is a success, we can explore expanding its budget—but not until we launch a pilot, gauge demand, iterate, and improve.
Our proposal is realistic because it was developed in conversation with Career Advancement leadership. The senior associate director and I met several times to brainstorm how USG can help. Once we refined the idea, I told the executive director, who said she “looks forward to working with the next USG leadership team.” A committee would be mutually beneficial: it will turn all 7,500 undergraduates into scouts for Career Advancement and give every student—including those not in exclusive clubs—the ability to connect with employers that Career Advancement doesn’t yet have access to.
The word “irresponsible” better describes the USG incumbents. It’s hard to imagine anything more irresponsible than USG leadership violating its own bylaws by failing to produce records on where it spent $2 million of the student body’s money. Article III, Title II, Section 2.a.i of the bylaws explicitly states that the executive vice president “shall track all expenditures within two business days of encumbrance or disbursement and make such records available upon request by any Undergraduate Student Government member” (emphasis added).
Despite this, the CLEAR Act formally acknowledges that such records do not exist. It states that USG “currently does not retain a centralized record of expenditures even internally, leading to key decisionmakers within USG being unable to make informed decisions.” The act shows that the EVP violated his own rules: one cannot both track all expenditures as a record producible on demand and fail to retain a centralized record of expenditures even internally. The New Generation Party requested to see the budget from several different members over the course of the past month; not a single one of them was able to produce it before the time of publication. The cabinet has given its own USG members—not to mention the student body—zero visibility into where our $2 million is being spent. What can we call this if not negligence?
The second critique that the op-ed levels against the New Generation Party concerns our party stipend proposal. The goal of the party stipend is to reduce the barrier to entry for students to meet each other. Our plan is to provide funds to every club to host their own party, the details of which must be posted on a central website developed by USG that is readily accessible to everyone on campus. In doing so, any student on a Thursday or Friday night can find out what’s happening on campus and show up. The stipend will stitch our community together by giving students across social circles a frictionless avenue to meet. Log on and show up. That’s it.
The op-ed describes the stipend as “impossible” on the grounds that USG cannot fund purchases of alcohol. Never did we state that USG funds would—or even could—pay for alcohol. The assumption that alcohol is an adjunct to every party is the author’s—not ours. Parties hosted using the party stipend will be no different from events that clubs currently host with USG funding, which are alcohol-free. The key difference is that there will be more parties and they will be easily accessible.
Finally, the critique that it would be “dangerous” for me to be USG president—because I wrote a nuanced opinion piece in the Chicago Thinker—is cancel culture exemplified. The op-ed misrepresents what I wrote. It lifted a quote out of context to imply I support Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) current actions. I do not. My piece instead argued that ICE’s unprofessional methods are counterproductive to its own goals. It is completely fine to disagree with me; debate is the lifeblood of a university. But to question my fitness for leadership as the president of USG simply because I hold a different opinion runs counter to the core of this institution.
UChicago’s culture is defined by intellectual freedom. In six years of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s College Free Speech Rankings, UChicago is the only school to have held the top spot more than twice—a record no Ivy League school comes close to matching. That tradition demands engagement from every one of us, not conformity.
The politicization of USG is an attempt to distract students from the obvious problem: the outgoing administration did not deliver meaningful change and lacked transparency. When results fall short, ideological rhetoric becomes a convenient tool. Students are smart enough to recognize that tactic for what it is and vote for a change.
The New Generation Party’s goals are clear and achievable: to stitch our community together and enhance student access to jobs after graduating. Let’s meet each other at parties and talk about politics, philosophy, or whatever’s on our minds. And let’s lock down our future together. I encourage you to look at our demos, hear us speak, and decide for yourself.
William Moller is a third-year in the College and a candidate for USG president on the New Generation Party slate.
Editor’s note: William Moller is an employee of Career Advancement. Grace Beatty and Aaron Horowitz, candidates for USG president and executive vice president, respectively, are staff members of the Maroon. They had no involvement in the publication of this op-ed.
The Maroon independently verified all claims for which evidence was not publicly available.
