This year’s Students’ Association Cabinet began the new school year with projects already in mind and in action. Headed by seniors Lonny Mallach as SA president and Emily Faber as his chief-of-staff, the 22-member cabinet discoursed with both the school administration and the student body on ways in which to improve the quality of life.
The SA Cabinet belongs to the executive branch, one of the three branches of student government. According to Mallach, its purpose is to work on student advocacy issues.
The other two branches are the judicial branch, All Campus Judicial Council, and the legislative branch, the senate. ACJC deals primarily with disciplinary issues while the senate’s principle duties are appropriations. “My hopes are that this year will bring a closer working relationship between the three branches,” Mallach said.
Cabinet members have high hopes and aspirations for this year and have already begun work on transforming many of their ideas into actions. One concerns of the cabinet is addressing involves newly-announced printing costs. “So far, a great deal of time has been spent investigating and discussing the pay for printing policy and the system that ITS will soon adopt,” freshman and cabinet member Bob Reynolds said.
Already, the cabinet succeeded in expanding the DVD budget from $4,000 to $12,000, which will increase the library’s collection from 250 to around 1,000 titles.
“With the funds recently released it seems that it will become a great service for students,” cabinet member and junior Noah Kuschel said. “Hopefully we can develop some way to make sure the collection is updated in future years.”
Along with DVD expansion, the cabinet now provides freshmen with a way to avoid the “freshman 15” and contribute to charity with the donate-a-block program. Junior Greg Stein suggested the program. “The way the program works is that there are four shifts of two people working the pit from 8-12 Wednesday night collecting food,” he said. “The next day, the food is gone through and counted.”
The food is taken to Foodlink, a local food bank. Different organizations, such as Phi Kappa Tau, Circle K and Alpha Phi Omega staff the table each week and have raised approximately $1,200 worth of food per week.
The donate-a-block program and the DVD expansion are only two projects out of several the SA Cabinet is working on. Others include moving and expanding the Corner Store, preserving The Hive, simplifying the club recognition process and drafting a security policy for UR.
Mallach and Faber selected the Cabinet members. They chose 12 last spring and the rest this fall through an open application process. In part, they formed the cabinet based on class years and living areas in order to better represent the student population. At present, there are three seniors, seven juniors, six sophomores and five freshmen. Four live in Towers, two on the Quad, six in Susan B. Anthony, seven in Hill Court, one in Valentine and one off campus.
“We have full meetings with everyone once every two weeks,” Mallach said. “Smaller meetings are held more often within the separate committees.”
Mallach’s job specifically entails meeting with the administration and getting their point of view while Faber’s job deals more with student representation.
“I feel like this year’s cabinet will work very well together,” sophomore Meghan Schubmehl said. “Lonny seems to have put a great deal of thought into his cabinet.”
Kline can be reached at mkline@campustimes.org.
