As we reach the midpoint of our glorious summer, I’m sure many of you thought you could escape mention of ASUU in these pages. Sorry, but we are The Chronicle.
Don’t worry, I have no grievances with the new administration, I simply want to entreat them with a number of requests so I don’t have to write about ASUU’s screwups so often this coming school year. After all, last year was a doozy.
To Tayler Clough, Rachel Rizzo and the rest of future ASUU: Please start us fresh. You have all made promises to us, to the university and to yourselves. You stayed up nights planning, you spent days yawning through grievance hearings. Now, here you are with a full year to improve our university, and you can choose to do it or to pass. In the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. You can already put “Student Body President” or “Vice President” on your résumé, kick your feet back and coast. It happened last year and no one died.
If the Focus Party, featuring Patrick Reimherr and Jon Hayes, fulfilled all of the promises they made in 2008, we would have a better school. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Initially, the party’s platform seemed well thought out and positive. Why, The Chronicle even endorsed them. But after they assumed office, we saw that the promises made were simply a means to an end.
If you want an example, take RedPages for instance. For those of you who didn’t notice this insignificant publication–and who can blame you–RedPages was Reimherr’s proposed way to bring students together on campus. It was supposed to contain scholarship, campus and student group information, but didn’t…or whatever it did paled in comparison to the original promise. RedPages did feature an incomplete list of student groups on campus, but did not include any contact information. Ultimately, ASUU used $4,000 of student fees to distribute 5,000 copies of the worthless booklet to a student body of more than 28,000. Bad math or bad leadership?
The Focus Party made buzzword promises, such as sustainability. There was nearly no end to “sustainability” talk. Regardless of how bad an idea is, it sounds better when you stamp “sustainability” on it. But I suppose every campaign does this and it is somewhat excusable. However, the more specific promises made must be fulfilled.
No one honestly expected the More 4 U party of 2007 to build a parking lot underneath Presidents’ Circle, and so they didn’t win. We vote for promises we hope can be executed.
The Fuse Party of two years ago did this beautifully. They made three campaign promises: two buzzwords and one obtainable. They built their platform on an improvement of academic advising and a graduation guarantee. Three years later, the promise is still being realized and carried out well.
Over the past year, Focus showed all of us how not to please the student body. They promised to collect feedback on campus, but never truly did adequately. Perhaps if they had, they would have realized what they were doing wrong and made a semblance of an effort to improve… but most likely not.
On March 11, we, as a student body, chose you, the Revolution Party. We wanted change and you told us you could deliver. You have the floor now, so please don’t let us down. The bar is so low right now, you could trip over it.
Jonathan Deesing