Mindy Fountain

Next year promises to bring enormous changes to our lives as students at UR, and we need an experienced, dedicated, and forthright SA president to make sure that our views and concerns are heard. It is time to make changes in our Students? Association, to improve the way we are organized, how we communicate, and budget. I have experience as a student senator, which included a term on the budgeting committee, chief of staff for former SA President Scott Jennings (?99-?00), chairperson of Outside Speakers Committee, D’Lion, STING member, and varsity athlete. As president I would create a representative cabinet where student leaders from all areas of campus life would get together to discuss what their groups are doing, problems they are facing, and what they would like to see change about our university. It would consist of students representing all areas of student life, from community service and Greek organizations to undergraduate councils and publishing groups. By improving communication between our groups we can help each other to achieve our goals as members of these groups specifically and as students at UR more generally. I see the cabinet also as a place to discuss long term issues, such as the changes in campus life that will come with the implementation of freshman housing, renovations and remodeling on campus such as the need for more performance spaces and a campus pub, and serious issues such as racism which we have recently seen to be very much present on our campus. I would like to invite a different administrator every month to our meeting so that we can discuss our concerns with them. In order to keep the student body informed of the discussions that would take place in this representative cabinet and in my meetings with the administration I would like to write a column weekly or biweekly, published in the Campus Times. I would also post information online, utilizing the president and cabinet section of the Hive, to further help facilitate communication. I would also like to see this cabinet work with the Student Activities office to create a year-end evaluation of programs and events on campus before budgeting for the next year, so that there is a better guideline for the appropriations committee and senate to work with. This would help us better use the limited resources we have. I would restart our involvement in the Rochester Area Student Union, which was created last year and brought together leaders from area colleges. This group?s aim was to bring bigger events for area students, for example bring a big name concert exclusively for students of all the schools in the area. We also set up busses so that we could attend programs and events at each others schools, and worked on getting student discounts and organizing transportation for events of interest to students in the Rochester area. Please visit my website at http://mail.rochester.edu/~mf004g. Thanks for reading and please vote Mindy Fountain for SA President.